Galiana WithSecure, a 1970-vintage, yawl-rigged, S&S-designed Swan 55 is the oldest yacht competing in the current Ocean Globe Race. Skippered by Tapio Lehtinen and crewed by young Finnish sailors keen to experience the adventurous golden age of sailing during the ’70s and ’80s, she is the last design under RORC/CCA rules in a 40-year lineage of Olin Stephens-designed ocean racing yawls dating back to his breakthrough 1929 design Dorade.
Dorade, launched from Minneford’s shipyard, New York in 1930 revolutionised offshore racing, finishing second in that year’s Bermuda Race before going on to win the 1931 Trans-Atlantic Race, and Fastnet classic in ’31 and ’33. Between times, she took overall honours in the 1932 Bermuda Race and won the 1936 TransPac – a feat repeated in 2013!
Previously, Bermuda and Fastnet Races by contrast was an ocean-going version of a 6-M, the class in which Olin and his brother Rod Stephens had first learned to race and later design.
