We purchased this 28 foot sloop from the Salve Regina College in Newport, Rhode Island. The boat had been donated to the school and used for several years as a teaching boat. But the school did not have the time or money to maintain it.
It is the Kings Cruiser class sloop, designed by Tor Sunden (the designer of the ubiquitous Folkboat). It was built by Storebro Bruk in 1954 in Sweden. This ship builder used WWII refugee boatbuilders to create this model for export to the US about the same time as the Concordia Yawls were being exported by Abeking and Rasmussen. The boat was designed with two internal brackets for lifting the entire hull into the hold of a cargo ship for delivery to the US.
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| During restoration | Launch day |
Judy (my wife) and I spent three years restoring it. We first had to make watertight. We redecked and restored the original canvas deck. The cabin house looked good when we bought it, but turned out to be rotten in several places. The entire upper cabin house was rebuilt. Down below we restored broken frames, rebuilt the galley, and installed a new Westerbeke one-cylinder gas engine. The boat had a unique laminated mast step that supported the stress of the downward mast forces without obstructing the cabin interior. We relaminated and replaced these massive oak arches.
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| Mahogany interior | Under sail | At anchor |
All the hatches were replaced. New bronze fittings were designed and cast. The original design had a self-tending, clubfoot jib. This had been discarded in preference to the more efficient Genoa jib. We researched the original sail plan, rebuilt the jibboom, and had a new jib made to restore the original sail plan. Though on light air days we still used the Genoa, the self-tending jib was a joy to sail single-handed.
Sadly, we had little time to enjoy the boat. We cruised along the East Coast in the last year. Our best trip was sailing up to the Wooden Boat Show in Newport, Rhode Island. We received several offers to sell the boat on the spot. It was hard to refuse. Plus there was a long list in the back of my mind of repairs still to be made. So we sold it. We sailed it back from Newport to Westbrook, Connecticut where we had done the restoration and was our home port. And we never used it again.
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