Sailing legend, built in 2010: "Atlantic" during the first light wind tests
It's "just" a replica. But what a! The replica of the black three-mast schooner, which has now been completed, measures almost 70 meters in length. YACHT author Erdmann Braschos was on board
The original was launched in 1903. And immortalized two years later in the annals of sailing history. At the Kaiser Cup from Sandy Hook near New York to Land's End in the south-west of England, "Atlantic" set a best time for the North Atlantic passage in a regatta under skipper Charles Barr in 1905: 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute. It was not to be undercut until a hundred years later.
It is this record, but also the sheer size and design of the boat that prompted owner Ed Kastelein to build it. The Dutchman is a lover of classical music and is experienced in the great subject. He had previously resurrected "Eleonora", the replica of the Herreshoff schooner "Westward", in whose honor the Big Class met at Cowes this summer.
Steel construction, in 2008: The hull was created in Holland, the expansion in France
The YACHT portrait of the new, closely based on the original "Atlantic" traces on seven pages how Kastelein re-created the miracle sailor at two locations and in four years, which already logs eleven or twelve knots in light winds.
The schooner, which has been chartered for several weeks, will celebrate its regatta premiere from 25 September to 3 October at the Voiles de St. Tropez in France. Then it goes across the Atlantic, which gave the boat its name, to the Caribbean.
