Alexander Hoare had no intention of buying a boat when he set off on his St Mawes One-Design Merlin that day in May 2008. He had happily raced the pretty 14ft wooden dayboat while on holiday in St Mawes for many years and had managed to avoid the onerous responsibilities of owning a bigger boat. But, as he sailed out of the pretty Cornish harbour, he spotted a striking-looking ketch anchored off Tresanton Beach, between the quay and the castle. It was an unusual boat, with classic lines reminiscent of the 1930s but a rugged look about her, as if she had travelled far and wide. A classy dame with a heart of steel.
“Her lines were elegant but also fantastically seaworthy,” he says. “She had ‘ship-like lines’, which I loved.”
After eyeing up the boat most of the day, Alexander eventually plucked up the courage to sail over and call out ‘Ahoy!’. The owner told him the yacht had been built at the famous De Vries Lentsch shipyard in Holland in 1948 – not the 1930s as he might have assumed – and, in typical Dutch style, she was made of steel. Curiously, she was called Cape Horn. He told him he was thinking of selling the boat, but Alexander told him he wasn’t interested. Instead, having satisfied his curiosity, he sailed back to shore and carried on with normal life.
Alexander came from a family of sailors. He, which had opened his eyes to the pleasures of sailing on classic yachts in the Med.
