History
From a biography of
Sir Reginald Bennett:
"Bennett's great love was
yachting. At Oxford, he won a Blue for sailing each year from 1931 until
1934, a year when he raced for Britain against Germany in dinghies at the
Kiel Regatta and won the City of Hamburg Cup. He was then helmsman on Sir
Richard Fairey's J-Class yacht Shamrock V in the races against America in
1934-35, and was reserve for the 1936 Olympic yachting crew; he would have
gone to the 1940 Olympics but for the war. From 1936 to 1938 he raced in
the 12-metre yacht Evaine, and was later a member of the British-American
Cup team in 1949 and 1953 and the winner of many other races, including the
Public Schools' Trophy in 1967. Through sailing he became a friend of Prince
Philip's. Both were members of the Thursday Club, the unrepentantly masculine
lunch club that met above Wheelers Restaurant, Soho, in the 1950s. Bennett
later invited the Prince to join the Imperial Poona Yacht Club, a convivial
and select institution founded by Bennett as an undergraduate in the 1930s.
Each year the club challenges current Oxford undergraduates to a backwards-sailing
race down the Thames. The club's motto is Chhota hazri, or "Good health"
in Hindustani. The epicure Bennett translated it as: There is nothing worse
than a continental breakfast." |
Specifications
Construction:
Camper & Nicholson
Design: Charles Nicholson
Year: 1936
Material: Wood
Sail number: 12
K 2
Length overall: 21.40
m
Length in the water
line: 13.92 m
Beam max: 3.60 m
Draft max 2.72 m
Sail area: 186 sqm
Links
List of other 12mR Yachts
Freundeskreis Klassische Yachten
Sir Reginald Bennett