Adela: "A Masterpiece"

BY MICHAEL LEVITT

The schooner Adela is both very old—having first been launched in 1903— and very new at once. But first, Adela, wholly rebuilt in England for American owner George Lindemann, is very large. Length overall is 140 feet (43m or 174 feet when measured to the tip of her sizable bowsprit. Her carbon-fiber mainmast stands a sky bruising 152 feet (46m) above the deck; the carbon-fiber foremast is but 26 feet shorter. If one were to tie her running rigging together, it would span three nautical miles.

Then consider her sail area, both as a function of the weight of the boat and sheer size. "The boat has nearly the same sail-area to displacement ratio of a dinghy," said Bill Pearson, of North Sails UK, who worked on sail design and construction. "I'm a racing sailor and never expected to be impressed by a 230-ton vessel. Adela, however, gets up to 16 or 17 knots very quickly."

The mainsail on this schooner is 5,070 square foot (471m²)—one of the largest triangular sails ever built by North, if not the largest. To minimize weight aloft, the cloth specified was a custom run of North's GATORBACK SPECTRA-785TX. Its three-ply construction allowed a Spectra content of 78,500 denier. (weight of the fiber in grams per 9,000 meters.) Prior to Adela, the strongest Spectra cloth ever produced by North was 59,000 denier.

"A polyester mainsail," said Gerard Dykstra, the noted Dutch naval architect who headed the refit, "would have weighed 760 kilograms (1,675 lbs. The North Spectra mainsail weighed 450 kilograms (or 992 lbs.)." There is hardly any stretch to the cloth, making Adela relatively close-winded for a schooner whose strong suit is beam-reaching.

If the cloth is high-tech, the jibs are hanked in the time-honored fashion. No roller-furling or reefing is used. The working sails are, also, finished in a traditional manner. However, schooners aren't easy boats to sail, and to help the nine person crew handle sails, Adela shows 34 Lewmar winches, 17 of which are hydraulically powered.

Adela began life, as noted, in 1903. She had steel frames covered with 3.5-inch (89mm) teak. Designed by the famed W. C. Storey and built by J. G. Fay & Co. of Southampton, England, she was called at the time, "a Big Class yacht," like King Edward VII's Britannia. Such yachts were forerunners of the J-Class boats that sailed for the America's Cup from 1930-37. Adela's original owner, Claude Thornton Cayley, rear commodore of the Royal London Yacht Club, raced and cruised her extensively until the outbreak of the war in 1914. A yachting magazine of that day described Adela as "one of the finest schooners afloat."

A second owner aptly named her Heartsease and sailed her for the next nine years. From 19371950, however, the yacht languished in a mud berth in Brightlingsea. Stripped of masts and 62 tons of ballast, she served as a houseboat. While well cared for, her sailing days appeared over. In 1992, however, American George Lindemann purchased Heartsease to restore and sail her again. The yacht was towed to Pendennis Shipyard, in Falmouth, England, where the refit was to take place under Dykstra's watchful gaze. He had previously worked on such high-profile refits as the J-Class yacht Endeavour and the three-masted schooner Adix. However, a survey revealed a major part of her teak hull, including all the structural steel, would need to be replaced. The deck, too, was in sorry shape. Thus, it was decided to rebuild her in steel.

While the profile and freeboard of the yacht were strictly maintained, the volume underwater was increased to improve performance and permit modern systems and larger accommodations. This was abetted by a tank-tested keel that draws nearly 16 feet (4.85m.) and wind-tunnel-tested sails and rig.

Her gaff-schooner rig was replaced with a taller Bermudian schooner rig and the original interior was recreated in its original form as closely as possible. Navigation, communications, propulsion systems and creature comforts, however, are decidedly state-of-the-art.

By any measure, Adela was a supreme sailmaking challenge that not only involved Bill Pearson, of North Sails UK, where the sails were cut and built; but also Guido Cavalazzi, of North Sails Italia, principal sail designer; Peter Mahr, head of North Sails Cloth, which manufactured the special Spectra cloth for working sails; and Burns Fallow, of North Sails New Zealand, who did corner loading and stress analysis.

The Adela project is also a clear example of the synergy a company like North, the largest sailmaker in the worldcan muster. As another supplier to her put it: "Adela has the best suit of sails ever built for a yacht of this size." All sails fit and were fast right out of the bag.

The original rig had its masts close together in the classic tradition; however, the wind tunnel indicated that separating them farther would be advantageous. North's experience with Whitbread ketches confirmed this, and the masts were given an extra five feet of separation. The tunnel also favored quadrilateral-sheeted jibs (i.e., two sets of sheets)—an idea developed on J-class boats racing in the 1930s.

Different spinnaker designs and sizes were also tested. Adela largest TRUERADIAL™ GENNAKER™ measures 1,119 square feet (1033 m2)...a quarter acre! When launched in 1903 Adela's spinnaker was made of pure silk.

The tunnel liked Dykstra's wishbone foresail (shown in photo), but it proved unsatisfactory due to contact with the aft-swept spreaders when sailing off-the-wind. It has since been replaced by a fully battened largeroached, sail which is also easier to handle.

On April 17, 1995, the boat was relaunched under her original signature Adela. By combining very old and very new, she has upset some purists. "The owner wanted a sailing yacht, not a museum piece," explains Dykstra. "He got a boat capable of crossing oceans with speed and in luxury— not a dowager duchess. Not a boat that can't stand too much excitement." Lindemann looks to sail New York Yacht Club's Transatlantic Race, from Sandy Hook to the Lizard. in 1997.

Adela is unapologetically the best of both worlds. She was designed to be fast in 1903 and redesigned to be fast in 1995. As such, she hasn't strayed far from her roots. Matthew Sheahan, writing in Yachting World, perhaps put it best: "...Adela is much more than just another superyacht; indeed she would be better described as a superclassic. She is, quite simply, a masterpiece."