SUPERYACHT #8
Spring 2006
Article selected from our quarterly magazine dedicated to the largest
and most luxurious boats with information, interviews, technical
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Article by
Lino Pastorelli
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SCHOONER INVADER
She turned up in a corner of the Portosole marina in Sanremo,
right after the previous year's Classic Week races in Monaco,
moored alongside. With her two towering wooden masts on a narrow
hull she certainly didn't go unnoticed. Nor did her appearance of
a somewhat disdainful, distinguished Bostonian lady, obliged to
sojourn in an expanse of white plastic, pass unobserved!
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TECHNICAL DATA
LOA (with bowsprit) 49.30 m
Length of hull 41.62 m
Beam 7.88 m
Displacement 184 t
Sail area 1250 sq. m.
Engine 700 HP
Water tanks 3800 litres
Fuel tanks 16.400 litres
For further information: www.invader.it
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This is Invader, one of the greatest of East Coast designed schooners.
When in 1905 Ray Rainey, heir to the W.J.Rainey Coke Co. empire,
engaged Nat Herreshof's nephew A.S.Chesebrough for the design,
there was still something in the air of the risky challenges of
Gloucester and Halifax fishermen on the Newfoundland banks with
their famous down by the stern schooners, the heirs of America in
a word, though at the beginning of the century evolution was
already going in the direction of safer vessels of adequate speed
to be first at the fish markets. But their interiors were adapted
for taking rich Yankee yachtsmen cruising or racing. Those were
the years of the legendary Bluenose, Delawana, Esperanto and
Cicely. The Invader design grew out of this fertile marine humus:
a fine-lined steel hull, drop-keel, light displacement, plenty of
sail, obviously a racer. The chosen yard was Lawley & Sons of
Boston. After being launched on 11th July 1905, and after some fine
tuning such as shortening the main and mizzen masts, the boat
turned out to be fast and manoeuvrable. We may presume that the
absence of propeller and shaft (there was no engine) and the
optimal weight/power ratio meant that she could plane with the
wind abaft the beam. In any case Invader in the beginning won no
races. The second owner, John Borden, bought her in 1914 and
installed two 100 HP Hall & Scott petrol engines. His intention
was to sail the Great Lakes and organise an Arctic expedition,
which he successfully did, but the yacht had no significant
sporting success in this period. Invader changed ownership in 1919
and 1921 before Don Lee bought her in 1924. This Californian
businessman changed her name to Nancy Lee, and also changed ocean,
taking her to the Pacific coast and enrolling for the 1926
Transpac, the most important West Coast race. Invader, having
resumed her original name, won the race in spite of being becalmed
for two days off Hawaii, establishing a long lasting record over
the 2225 mile course. In those years her guests included the
Hollywood jet set, from Charlie Chaplin to sailing enthusiast John
Barrymore. The end of the golden age of schooners was marked, in
Invader's case, by other victories on the Pacific, a beaching on
the coast of San Monica - fortunately without damage - and the
crisis of 1929. There followed a series of owners with projects
for chartering and for improbable scientific expeditions until the
eve of the war when she was taken over by the Sailor's Union
Pacific and converted into a training ship. During the war she
patrolled the Pacific coast, her last dignified position before
the decline. Then the fashion for floating casinos, with the
enterprise of rampant criminality and beautiful adventuresses,
involved the schooner in not always quite clear events such as
fires, vendettas and perhaps actual crimes. The name of Lucky
Luciano also emerged at the time. There were other abandoned
projects of coastal trade in South America, then the old engines
were replaced by two 150 HP diesels before the schooner enjoyed
ten years of peace and quiet with a certain Mr Wood. He carried
out restoration that was no more philological than it was
preservation-based and used the yacht for cruises in Mexico and
California. In '77 another owner transformed her for his own use,
employing a shipyard in Honolulu. The masts were shortened (she
now had Marconi rig), the engine power was increased, bulwarks
were mounted with a long, horrendous canopy to shelter the
tourists. The last insult, Invader lost her status as a sailing
vessel. If the years as a tourist boat in Hawaii were certainly
not edifying for the old thoroughbred, the period beginning in
1988-89 wasn't much better: 200 seats for dinner parties, 300
standing guests for cocktail parties, moored in Miami as a
floating restaurant. Or fitted out for whale-watching excursions
and probably for various smuggling operations in Mexico. After
being moved to the Caribbean where she remained a few years,
Invader headed east and arrived in Europe. The first part of her
history ends here. Giuliano Mussone is an Italian captain, from
Sanremo to be precise, with fifty years of sailing behind him and
infinite knowledge of coasts and seas. In 2000 he was engaged by
the Caribbean Blue Sea Inc. to find a big, prestigious sailing
ship, and he remembered Invader which he had come across somewhere
years earlier. The search was long but he found her at the Lurssen
shipyards in Bremen, Germany. The decision to create an ad hoc
yard for restoration in Viareggio arose from the flexibility
required for such a structure and from the fact that the area is
rich in shipbuilding companies and craftsmen. Invader, by now a
stripped down hull, made a 2800 mile voyage on a cargo ship from
Bremen to La Spezia, then on a barge and then on a trailer that
looked like a caterpillar, before arriving at her destination in
the industrial area of Viareggio. After the ritual measurements
with spirit level and plumb-line, work was begun. Removal of the
lower courses of plating, the frames and floors, following a
careful survey of every detail; elimination of the cement used as
ballast (the original lead had been pragmatically sold for making
bullets at the beginning of the war) with a checking of the drop-
keel box whose blade was no longer used, weighing of everything
taken off board, and a general sandblasting. It was during this
phase that a bag of coal was found in the keel, probably a
superstitious reminder of the capitalist fortune that had given
birth to Invader. Following the instructions of the La Spezia
studio C.E.D., work was begun on replacing beams, floors and 80%
of the plating, in accordance with the original thicknesses: 15 mm
for the keel, 10 mm for the quick-works, 8 mm for the topsides and
deck. The remaining original plating, ultrasound-tested, is still
visible at the stern, the so called lazaretto, now the engine
room. Here the two old GM 220 HP engines have been replaced by one
700 HP which, with a 5 blade 45" screw, shifts the fully loaded
schooner at a cruising speed of 11.5-12 knots with a maximum of
14. The interior design is the work of Anna Signorini from
Viareggio. In the absence of original documentation the choice is
classic: owner's yacht with two guest cabins amidships; owner's
suite aft, as wide as the beam; saloon, skipper and crew's
quarters forward. The décor is sober and the furnishings
are period with a touch of license. Unusual airiness - below deck
- and spaces that open up on fine prospects, like the almost
totemic vision of the mainmast viewed from the owner's cabin.
Nothing that technology can offer has been spared with regard to
comfort and safety on long voyages. All the systems are doubled up
in the engine room. The massive electronic instrumentation is
distributed between the stern doghouse - the old lookout station -
and the wheelhouse seat-chest. The sail plan is 95% the original
one: hoisted on new masts in Douglas and silver spruce we have, on
a reach, 1250 sq. m. of sails, including jackyard and fisherman,
2500 with the balloons on a run: a cathedral of canvas! Sail
handling while racing requires 30-35 men (coordinated and able!
Mussone underlines) 16 of whom just for the mainsail. The boom,
which extends 9 metres beyond the stern, is 28 metres long and the
mainsail sheet is 160 metres, while the main rig weighs 3 tonnes.
"And if you set out on a gybe?" I ask innocently. Something in the
skipper's look invites me to change the subject! In 2005 Invader
appeared not only at Classic Week but also at the Coppa del Rey in
Palma. HM Juan Carlos, with his Bribon moored alongside, showed
that he knew the history of the schooner and its restoration very
well! There are prestigious dates awaiting Invader this year.
She'll shortly be getting rigged, and out of the container will
come hundreds of sheaves, miles of sheets, halyards and lines, the
precious sails: in a word, the complete wardrobe of a splendid old schooner.
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