The Saint Petersburg Classic Yacht Week starts next week on 14th August. Competing yachts will be based at the Hercules Marina and after three days of racing they will enter the Neva River and will be moored at the famous Peter and Paul Fortress for a two day festival.

One of the boats entered is the classic boat Galatea. She was built in Stockholm, having been designed by the preeminent boat designer Axel Nygren. The Boat was built in 1899 making it 113 years old, she was rumoured at the time to have been built for the crowned Prince of Sweden, but in truth it was built for a Swedish cork merchant; Gustaf Wiklander. The boat was sailed and raced around Europe before being discovered by Cyril Tobin, commodore of the prestigious St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, who then went on to purchase the 19.62m long boat.

After successfully racing the boat on the bay for 10 years, Galatea changed hands between several famous individuals such as the Violinist, Jascha Heifitz and the Actor, Dick Powell who sailed with fellow celebrities, Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. The boat was eventually sold to the famous movie producer and director of many famous films, Joseph Mankiewicz.

Galatea is unusually slender and has extreme overhangs that make her 19.62m in length overall. She is only 12 feet at the beam which makes her extremely fast for sailing and especially racing. She has mahogany planks and iron deck beams, floors and frames and is webbed together with rivets and iron gussets. These form a massively stiff skeleton of ring frames that give the vessel great integrity; fewer joints to work and rot, and are probably the key to her longevity.

She eventually migrated north from Southern California to Puget Sound but unfortunately fell into a state of disrepair. It was there; in 2002 that she caught the eye of the present owner Judd Tinius. A shipwright and boatyard owner, Judd has continuously worked over the past 10 years to restore her to her former glory. Galatea was brought to Antigua in 2005 where she won the prestigious Antigua Classic Yacht regatta in 2007 and 2009. She has been successfully racing and chartering in the Caribbean and the East Coast of the United States. In May of 2011, she crossed the Atlantic and North Sea, once again, on her own bottom, with no engine, just sails and solar power and was brought home to Sweden where she was built over 112 years ago!

The Saint Petersburg Classic Yacht Week 2012 is organised by the Yacht Club of Saint-Petersburg and runs from the 14th August to the 20th August in Saint Petersburg, Russia. More information about the event and other classic boats competing is available here.

Emma Upton

See Monaco Classic Week images

Last Updated ( Friday, 10 August 2012 )