This is the first in a series of articles in which SWS collaborates with
NANNI AUSTRALIA to showcase a commitment to wooden boats.

Near where the North Esk River flows into the Tamar, on the edge of central Launceston, there is a small marina.

The big estuary tides mean that keel boats can only come and go from Launceston above half tide. There’s a characterful, if motley, collection of craft tied up here, but one stands out like a beacon and it was this, The Robert Perry 40 footer called EVENING TIDE that I had come to visit.

Bob Perry, although well and truly an American, has a small connection to Australia. In 1957 when Perry was twelve, he and his family moved from Sydney, to Vancouver, British Columbia. At the beginning of his ninth-grade year, they moved again to Mercer Island, Washington, an area renowned for its school system. Here, his interest in sailboats really clicked. He met famous designer William Garden, joined the local yacht club, and excelled at mechanical drawing.

60 years on, his designs are some of the most successful cruising yachts around such as the Tatoosh 42, Tayana 37 and the Valiant 40. Throughout his career he has designed boats for many well recognised brands in the yachting industry, such as Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Ta Shing, Islander and Passport.

But the design we were in Launceston to see is a close relative of the Baba 40, but unlike all her sister ships this is the only one in the world made out of timber. It’s called a wooden Robert Perry, Baba 40 Pilot House.

The story of the Baba 40 really starts with the Baba 30 which brought together a winning combination of talents – developer Bob Berg, designer Bob Perry, and what was then a little known Taiwanese boatyard called Shing Sheng. Through the success of the little Baba 30 and the Baba 35, Shing Sheng started on the road to become a force in the boatbuilding world. By 1979 they had changed their name to Ta Shing and had moved to a new purpose built factory. It was in this year that Berg commissioned Perry to design a new 40-foot model to fill out the line.

Perry was not happy with merely evolving his earlier Baba 35 design, which in itself was a stretched version of the 30. Instead, in search of more boat speed, Perry dusted off the lines of his famous Valiant 40 with its radical fin keel and separate skeg-hung rudder had defined the “performance cruiser” category only five years earlier. From the Valiant 40 hull form he derived an all-new full keel design which was to be the Baba 40. It proved to be a huge step forward over earlier Babas with Perry describing the Baba 40 having an entirely different stability personality. It was stiffer initially, beautifully balanced and much faster.

Production ended in 1996 with a total of 115 boats being solidly built in hand-laid GRP.

EVENING TIDE was originally commissioned by Frank Collins who, in 1978, started Collins Marine, now Nanni Diesel Australia. As a keen yachtsman, and at that time, a Renault automotive dealer located in Sydney, it was a natural fit for a person with an engineering background and a strong passion for sailing to get involved in the distribution of marine diesel engines. Collins approached Bob Perry and asked him to draw the plans for a 40 footer to be constructed out of timber. Perry agreed as the wonderful correspondence below explains. (click to enlarge)

Bruce Darcey was chosen to build the boat in Hobart. Darce (as he was known), who died in 2011, was an outstanding Tasmanian shipwright. He built the boat from a mixture of mahogany, teak and Tasmanian timbers, and chose epoxy glass sheathed, triple diagonal planking rather than carvel construction. She was launched in 1985

One of the main purposes for the boat was to be a ‘flagship” for Frank Collins’ nascent marine engine business, entertaining guests and clients on Sydney Harbour. With this in mind when Renault became Nanni in the late 1980’s he replaced the original engine with a state of the art Nanni Six Cylinder 6/280, 60 HP which is still running faultlessly today. The 6 cylinders, combined with a bespoke thrust bearing and floating engine mounts, make it one of the quietest and smoothest engines I have ever heard on a 40 ft boat.

Fast forward to 2020 when the current owner acquired the boat. Huon Witt a professional skipper and boat restorer, had dreamt of owning this very boat after seeing a photo of her in 2016 whilst living overseas. He and his wife had been searching for the right Pilot House yacht for years. When they finally laid eyes on her, in a Hobart Marina, by chance they couldn’t believe their luck.

Huon takes up the story…

This was Frank Collins baby… He had the means to build additional, bigger boats but he chose to have this boat until the day he died. Everything that Bruce Darcy did was beautiful, however after 35 years, a full classic refit was required to bring her back to full splendour. It had the very best 1990’s technology but a lot of this was redundant now and in the way. We wanted the boat to live on, and we wanted it to be safe. We want to commute up and down the east coast of Australia, to be warm, be able to sail single handed in all conditions. So it was just a case of going through everything, finding out what was wrong, what needed fixing, from every hose in the boat, to every stainless steel bolt, and of course when you start on one thing, it just leads to the next…and the next. So eventually, we cruised the boat for 18 months… actually living and using the boat, day and night, until we fully understood how we wanted to perfect the systems. And then we just customised them to suit us.. There were no changes to layout, just the extensive classic refit, and the huge work of refinishing the hull to a concourse condition.

Huon’s shipwright workmanship is a tribute to his craftsmanship and determination. Some of the details are extraordinary. The paint job, the stainless steel work, the mechanical and electrical systems and so much else.

And as often happens, just as he is finishing this massive undertaking his life is taking a new direction. He seems a little sad to be passing on the custodianship now that he is so close to the end, but he should sleep well knowing that he has made sure that this wonderful craft will be around for the next 40 years of her life!