Class Warfare & Gender Politics

The SASC “Cruiser” Class is Born

By Martin van der Wal

HOANA at the 1987 Balmain Regatta

The mid 19th Century is a world away from our contemporary reality. Electric light had not yet been invented. Sail ruled the oceans, and Sydney Harbour had a large and important role as a victualing and trading port. The tyranny of distance was absolute. Our harbour had a remote character all of its own: deeply salty, multicultural, populated by iron men and wooden ships from the four corners of the globe. The Industrial Revolution was gathering pace and a rising middle class and an increasingly militant working class were challenging the old class and feudal systems. The novel, “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, swept through the English-speaking world. Here in Australia it was widely read and heavily discussed. It is a story of the underdog that promotes a muscular form of Christianity, giving a clarion call for a ‘fair go for all’ and a healthy disdain for the class system in general and its bullies in particular. Elements of our current Australian ‘character’ can be traced back to this one book’s influence. On Sydney Harbour, boat racing was evolving from competition between visiting ship crews racing their gigs and longboats for prize money to creating local racing divisions representing different social elements of the sport. In 1862, the Sydney Yacht Squadron was formed and became a fiercely guarded bastion of privilege on Sydney Harbour.

Before the Squadron there was only a handicap distinction between open and decked boats. The Squadron however, notably after it received its Royal pennant, upheld the standards of the Yacht Squadron at Cowes and, at that time, excluded all open and centreboard boats from membership or racing. A gentleman of that era aspired to keelboats with English or European DNA. Our local designs had the taint of working-class origins; it was another few decades before local designers found favour after making local versions of Continental designs. Here in Australia, except for the Couta boats of Port Phillip Bay, and the Halvorsens of Pittwater our great designers and builders of the wooden boat era are barely known and rarely mentioned. This is a hangover from our ‘cultural cringe’. New Zealand with its more independent and self-confident grasp of a proud history of ‘ Logan’s’, and ‘Baileys’, prize their homegrown classic craft so highly that they have a total export ban on them. However, it is important to remember that here in Sydney, world-class vessels evolved on the cusp of the modern era. They were distinctly suited to our temperate climate and local needs. The Amateurs were front and centre at their inception.

Sydney Amateur Sailing Club was formed in 1872 to cater for a group of non-professional sailors who regularly raced their boats home after a day of fishing at the Blackwall near the Spit. Neither they nor their craft conformed to the Squadrons toffee-nosed decrees, and they took a ‘fair go for all’ larrikin pride in that fact. The club's proud tradition of providing an affordable sailing home for all people from all walks of life and its particular history of fostering and preserving our homegrown Sydney Harbour design classics springs from our founders' quintessential disdain for forelock tugging of any variety.

The club in 1872 was the home of the affordable Australian racing boat of the day. It was typically an over-canvassed open boat with a hoisted spar, straight of stem, transom-ended, usually centre-boarded, and low in freeboard with a generous beam. Paid hands and professional skippers were the norm at the Squadron. Large sums of money were wagered on races weekly and any advantage keenly sought. Not that the Amateurs were above a punt or a cash prize, just that cheque-book sailing was the antithesis of the Corinthian principles the Club was founded on. All boats must be helmed and crewed by amateurs only.

Gentlemen of the Squadron decried the ‘racing machine’ open boats favoured by clubs like the Amateurs. In a letter published in the 1890’s in Australian Yachtsman and Canoeist, the writer stated: “Nothing can be more ridiculous to my mind than our open boats here with their enormous sails and unseaworthy qualities, they are always on the brink of capsize and their owners seem to measure their sport to the nearness they can go to the inside of a shark.”

Notwithstanding the very real threat that sharks then posed in a harbour full of offal, (Shark Island has that name for a very good reason), another contemporary observer remarked on the large number of boats, many of them open boats, which, during school holiday periods not only cruised the harbour but cruised the coast up to Pittwater or down to Botany Bay. Jump in the boat with the family and go for a holiday. What could be more practical, adventurous, and thoroughly suited to our climate?

Motorcars were unheard of. The few trains provided limited destinations. Women and children thus became, if only during the non-racing holiday periods, accustomed to thinking of the family’s boat in the way we think of family cars today: a means of escape and adventure. Mind you, with a Southerly change whistling overhead, a family under the boom tent of an open boat may well envy those below the decks of a more substantial vessel as they rock together in a holiday anchorage. This type of envy will, we all know, lead to aspiration. Aspiration often leads to a little gender friction, as wives and mothers rarely miss a chance at reminding their lumpen men folk of what a lovely time they had enjoyed, out of the rain, below decks on the neighbour's boat.

Much of what I have told in this story I owe to the late Roger Gale, Cliff's son, who at the 1987 Gaffers Day buttonholed me on the pontoon and after making sure I knew she had a circumnavigation of the world under her belt, gave me the proper class name of the nondescript yacht I had bought a year before. "Sydney Harbour Coachhouse 30 Cruiser Class," he said. He then went on to tell me, “It was all down to the women”. They would not put up with being sailing 'widows' anymore, and open boats were too dangerous for the kids. They were worried sick every time they went out. Other people had proper cabin-topped boats with a galley and a head; why couldn't they?

It had caused a hell of a ruckus at the Club, the hardcore ‘racing machine’ open boat sailors, for whom Roger had a lot of sympathy, had revolted at the introduction of the Cruiser Class and gone off and formed their own club, ‘The Neutral Bay Amateurs’. It had taken three years before they quietly came back to the fold. By then, locally designed, cabin-topped boats with proper interior accommodation had become a distinct class, the Cruiser Class, and fully included in the Amateurs racing schedule.

Three cruisers battle it out- RANGER A1 24ft Raised Deck Cruiser- WARANA A37 30ft Coach house Cruiser- VANITY A2 24ft Raised Deck Cruiser

Surprise! Surprise !! The entire concept was rebranded as a masculine initiative. Cruisers became a rapidly developing and common sight on Sydney Harbour, notable enough that photographs of new additions to the fleet were published in the major newspapers of the day. Many were developed by and for sailors who were either active or former skiffies. They had honed their skills in the fast and furious racing provided by these quintessential Sydney Harbour racing machines. So, when it came time to order a Cruiser, they were supremely confident in the design talents and craftsmanship of local builders, who pitted their skills against one another every weekend in a fiercely contested, high-stakes skiff battle on Sydney Harbour. Sydney’s best designers, builders, and racing helmsmen (often the same person) refined the lines from the quickest of the open boats and skiffs, adding a cabin on top and the necessary creature comforts below. They built them light using the finest local timbers and rigged them with plenty of canvas on overhanging booms and long bowsprits. This was before spinnakers, so a sailor was content to carry a bit too much canvas uphill because it would be needed on the way down. The Amateur's tradition of powerful boats that were a ‘handful’ on the racetrack endured, and even some of the open boat racers eventually succumbed to their charms.

These Jekyll and Hyde boats, however, became immediately docile with a reef in the main when the family was onboard. Generous internal volumes and ample deck space accompanied the beamy designs, allowing the ordinary working family to enjoy a summer holiday at the Basin with a berth for everyone. Large cockpits for lounging and dining al fresco were a feature. A reliable engine ensured the kids got back to school on time at the bitter end. The Cruiser class was the boat to own for many Sydneysiders. Safe offshore, ideally suited to our climate, and proudly rooted in Sydney’s finest sailing heritage. There never was an ugly one built.

The racing was very competitive, with cash prizes up for grabs: – Yes! Even at the Amateurs, large cash prizes were fought for. Cruisers on the club register today demonstrate their racing pedigrees clearly. Both ‘Warana’ and her sister-ship ‘Monsoon’ are Hayes built, Charlie Peel designed boats that owe a lot to the most famous Australian racing class of the first half of the 20th Century, the 21-foot Restricted Class. My vessel, ’Hoana,’ is an earlier 1925 Hayes boat with Charlie Peel working as foreman on her construction. Her elongated and refined Couta-boat lines probably owe a lot to Charlie’s many years of designing and building Couta-boats at his yard in Portsea. Wee Georgie Robinson designed and built the ballsy 30-footer, ‘Waitangi.’

WAITANGI - c1943 with a cruising rig

She is a classic eighteen-foot skiff on mega-steroids. Sean Langmans Sydney to Hobart and Fastnet gaffer ‘Maluka’ is a Cliff Gale-designed 28-footer. Cliff put a raised deck on his Cruiser designs. These have subsequently become known as ‘Ranger’ style boats. Cliff was a gun helmsman/ designer of his day, and his ‘Ranger’ style of Cruiser is a proven performer with an established fleet. New builds keep coming in the 24-foot length. ‘Volunteer,’ built by Ian Smith, is a recent addition to the fleet, She beautifully showcases the finest traditional boat-building craftsmanship.

The Class survived for fifty years, and over this period, the Amateurs had more than twenty Cruiser class yachts between 24 and 32 feet crossing start lines on any given Saturday. It is hard to know how many might have been launched between 1890 and the beginning of the Second World War, but it would be a substantial fleet. A healthy number survive today, many are still racing at the club, some are out there as unflagged family pleasure craft, others have found another life as converted motor launches. Poke an educated eye into most bays and inlets on the Harbour or Pittwater, and you will find at least one.

So here we have the creation of a purely Sydney Harbour-designed and built Amateurs Cruiser Class. Perfectly capable of a safe family cruise up and down the coast. (Or around the world.) Equally capable of a hell-for-leather race around the cans. (Or down to Hobart. Or even around the Fastnet Rock.)

Fasnet Race Start – MALUKA, A19, Skipper: Peter Langman, Owner: Sean Langman, Credit: Rolex Fastnet

They are a singular product of both the class tensions that gave rise to the formation of the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club and the pressure for what amounted to a boating revolution exerted on the club's male members by their wives and sweethearts to make the activities of the Club more gender inclusive. This trend continues today as the club proactively and successfully brings increasing numbers of women onto its register.

It's a history unique to the Sydney Amateur Sailing Club, marked by a special class of yachts that definitively belong to the club, the city, and the country. With this recognition comes our responsibility: to preserve, restore, rebuild, and continue to do what these big-hearted and historically significant boats do so well: race hard and cruise comfortably. 

WARANA racing