CARESS has a delightful neutral helm which gains a very small amount of weather helm as she heels, but the tiller remains light and sensitive. She does not tend to gripe or round up in gusts as do many modern boats, an attribute sought by Wally Ward in his quest for a nicely balanced boat.

After sixty years of constant use the entire boat has been stripped back to bare inside and out.

With her distinctive raised deck, pretty canoe stern and unique shear strake, CARESS is the epitome of a truly classic design from a past era.

The thing about old, iron-fastened, softwood timber boats like this, built in cold climates, is that once you take them into warmer waters it becomes an endless struggle to maintain them.  Patrick found it a losing battle, and the poor ship was starting to deteriorate again rapidly.  But Sandefjord has always been a lucky ship, and once again a saviour appeared.

Wally Ward was perhaps the last truly ‘amateur’ designer to have one of his boats win the Sydney-Hobart race and also one of the most successful designers to use the metacentric shelf principle.

Wally Ward designed a well-known series of yachts in Sydney over a period of 30 years from 1937 to 1965. His first yacht JANAWAY paved the way with her perfect hull balance and unmatched performance for her size.

When the 2021 Australian Wooden Boat Festival went the same way as so many other mass gatherings over the last 18 months, the organisers quickly made sure that the year wasn’t completely wasted.