Banker Andersin’s dream boat resurrected Kotka’s Wooden Boat Centre
General public has access to balcony to follow restoration of classic racing yacht
By Matti Huuskonen
Private funding, the handicraft tradition of the southeastern Kymi River Valley, and a love of wooden boats will shake hands in the city of Kotka on Wednesday at the formal opening of the brand new boatyard building of the Wooden Boat Centre of Finland in the central Kantasatama Harbour, the city’s oldest port.
The building of the boatyard was commissioned for a very specific purpose by one of Finland’s richest men, the Evli Bank chairman of the board, Henrik Andersin.
Two years ago Andersin, who is also known as a competitive yachtsman, bought from Italy a sleek beauty of a sailing boat that belongs to the so-called 12-metre yacht class.
What best describes the nature of the vessel, which is more than 20 metres bow to stern, is the fact that from 1958 to 1987 boats from this class were the ones taking part in the most prestigious regatta of them all, the Holy Grail of sailing, the America’s Cup.
What Andersin needed for his Blue Marlin dream boat, built in 1937, was committed restorers and a place where to restore it.
Both were found in Kotka. The Wooden Boat Centre had struggled as a cooperative society for more than ten years, so when Andersin made an offer, the City of Kotka jumped at the opportunity to sell the old boatyard building and also rent out a site for the new building.
As restorers of the boat, Andersin managed to get on board two of the cooperative’s original members, Allan Savolainen and Juha Suorsa, whose skills he was already familiar with. Suorsa built a boat for Andersin already during his student years in Hamina and he also belongs to Andersin’s racing crew.
Together the trio have set up the Red Sky Yachts shipwrights in Kotka, the primary task of which - for the next three years - will be the loving restoration of the Blue Marlin.
The company has ten workers. According to managing director Allan Savolainen, the Finnish market alone is not enough to give work to such a crowd.
Savolainen expects the Blue Marlin to act as a showcase that will bring more similar boats to be restored in Kotka, from as far afield as the United States.
If more work is to follow, it will be because of the quality of the craftsmanship, but also because the new building has been designed for boat constructing from the ground up, instead of having been put together out of an old industrial hall, as is the case with many of the competitors.
For example, the temperature and the humidity inside can be adjusted at the touch of a switch on a sliding scale, and the sanding dust is vacuumed away by efficient ventilation.
The boatyard building, which resembles a ship lying hull upwards, was designed by professor Ilmari Lahdelma, who has also drawn the new building for the Maritime Museum of Finland on the opposite side of the harbour.
The boatyard will include a café, and the actual ship-building hall will have a balcony, from where the general public can observe the progress of the restoration of the Blue Marlin.
Further plans for the boatyard include for example organising boat-building courses for fathers and sons.
The star of the show, the Blue Marlin, has an interesting history and an impeccable pedigree.
She was originally drawn by the renowned British designer Charles E. Nicholson, and was built at the Camper & Nicholsons yard in Gosport, Hampshire in 1938. Camper & Nicholsons were boatbuilders to the gliterati, and between the wars they produced a fleet of ever more graceful and fast racing and pleasure yachts.
Originally the Blue Marlin's name was Hurricane.
She was built for actress and chanteuse Marlene Dietrich’s female lover Marion Barbara "Betty" Carstairs, later nicknamed "Joe" Carstairs, presumably for her mannish habits and appearance.
The British-born Carstairs, who lived from the mid-1930s on an island she had bought in the Bahamas, was a wealthy oil family’s heiress and a boat racer, who achieved considerable success in the powerboat races of the time.
Ultimately she declined to accept the Hurricane and sold her on immediately after the boat was delivered.
The yacht eventually ended up in Italian hands while being kept in Izola on the Adriatic coast of Slovenia, from where Henrik Andersin bought her the year before last, and had her transported to Kotka to be restored to her former glory.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.5.2008
Links:
Blue Marlin Renovation Project
Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects
Camper & Nicholsons (Wikipedia)
Betty Carstairs (Wikipedia)
List of 12-metre yachts by country of build (the Blue Marlin is listed)
MATTI HUUSKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
matti.huuskonen@hs.fi
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| 20.5.2008 - THIS WEEK |
Banker Andersin’s dream boat resurrected Kotka’s Wooden Boat Centre
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