THE PERFECT NOTE
This is the story of a boat that has managed to achieve a truly impressive and consistent racing record over a period of 55 years, undeterred, it would seem, by nine ownership changes and having to comply with four different rating rules.
Clarionet was designed by Sparkman and Stephens and built (alongside her near sistership Roundabout) by Lallows in Cowes in 1966. She was produced for Derek Boyer who had previously owned Clarion of Wight (another S&S/Lallows collaboration) which, in 1963, had won the Fastnet and been the top-scoring boat in the victorious British team in the Admiral’s Cup.
Both Clarionet and Roundabout – which came to be known as “the heavenly twins” – were designed as One Tonners, rating 22ft under the RORC rule. They were both developments of the S&S Diana III, which had won the One Ton Cup the previous year, with Yachting World reporting that “S&S have developed still further the idea (of) a separate rudder at the after end of the waterline and an even smaller fin keel than ever before.”
Both boats were selected, along with , for the British One Ton Cup team, having excelled in the British trials just a week after their launch – “a sensational first appearance,” according to – but when they got to was second in the double-scoring long offshore race, she was sixth overall after her performance in the two inshore races let her down.
