The Restoration of JUDITH PIHL

After the halcyon days of match racing in the early 20th century, yachting in Australia reached a depressing impasse after World War I. An entire generation of yachtsmen had been killed in action, and the nation’s yachting fleets from before 1914 had been laid up. Most yachts had been out of the water for extended periods and needed major repairs to get them going again. Many were also now a decade out of date as far as rating rules were concerned and still carried huge, lumbering jackyard-topsail gaff-cutter rigs that needed entire football teams to sail them.

After the war, the Sydney Yacht Racing Association (SYRA) took the lead to resurrect local competition and began searching internationally for a new one-design class that was current, easily managed, and competitive. In December 1929, the Melbourne businessman William Dagg flamboyantly commissioned the famed Scottish yacht designers William Fife & Sons to draw a set of plans for the latest International 6-Meter for him to race on Port Phillip Bay. The yacht—Fife plan No. 790—was a state-of-the-art rocket ship. Built by J.J. Savage & Sons in Melbourne, she was planked in the wonderful Tasmanian timber Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinii) and launched in Port Philip Bay in 1930 as TOOGOOLOOWOO II.

Plenty of competitive yacht racers were paying close attention to this yacht’s sleekly designed hull, newfangled state-of-the-art Bermudan rig with an overlapping genoa, and outstanding performance. At around 36' (11m) LOA, stripped down to the basics to save weight, and raced with a crew of four or five sailors, TOOGOOLOOWOO II was glamorous, modern, and very, very fast.

The SYRA soon asked Dagg if they could approach Fife & Sons to inquire about plan No. 790 becoming the basis for an envisioned new one-design class. Dagg was delighted at the prospect and immediately sent a telegram on behalf of the SYRA requesting Fife’s terms, paving the way for the new class to become a reality.