1931 Sparkman & Stephens 36 Sloop

Classis 6 meter sailing yacht. LOA 36'5"/ beam 6'6" / draft 5'4"

Classic 6 meter sailing yacht. LOA 36'5"/ beam 6'6" / draft 5'4"

Designed by Sparkman & Stephens

Built in 1931 by Henry B. Nevins

Restored by Rockport Marine, Maine 2007

Relaunched in 2008

JILL is available from the same discerning yachtsman who is offering ANNA. Both
boats are elegant, fast, enduringly famous Sparkman & Stephens designs and both are classic wooden boats, but while ANNA is a long-distance cruiser/racer, JILL is a high-performance daysailer, a thoroughbred one-design racing craft.

A knowledgeable sailor had found her, in Maine, but in terrible condition and
nearly unrecognizable—a previous owner had tried to convert her into a cruising
boat by adding a doghouse. Rescued and in new hands, JILL was turned over to
Rockport Marine, where Taylor Allen’s skilled team of wooden-boat specialists,
under the direction of shipwright John England, spent nearly a year not restoring
her but rather rebuilding her; only the lead ballast and two bronze fittings remain
from the original boat. Yet Olin and Rod Stephens would recognize her instantly, for she was rebuilt to the original S&S drawings, which are available. On the inside, the double-planked hull is exposed Alaskan yellow cedar; the outside is mahogany, and the frames are steam-bent white oak. Her spars are Sitka spruce and her deck is Dynel-covered.

Reborn, JILL was launched into Rockport Harbor before an appreciative audience
on May 24, 2008. Since then, she has lived the life of a beloved retired racehorse,
one that is still fast enough to draw attention. “We raced her a bit,” her owner says; “Early on, we took her to the Six Metre Worlds, in Newport, but we didn’t do very well because we weren’t fully clued in to her upwind performance. We didn’t yet understand just how much rake her mast would take. Now we know.”

Designed by a young Olin Stephens, JILL originally came out of master
boatbuilder Henry B. Nevins’ legendary yard at City Island, New York, in 1931. She was commissioned by J. Seward Johnson, a passionate racing sailor and the son of a founder of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. As a boy, he grew up sailing and racing on Long Island Sound; professionally, he served as an executive and director of the family firm for 50 years. He was also president of the Atlantic Diesel Company and founder of the Harbor Branch Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to marine science and oceanographic research. With Edwin Link, inventor of the Link Trainer flight simulator, Johnson developed the Johnson-Sea-Link, a deep-sea research submersible for study of the underwater environment.

Throughout the 1930s, Seward Johnson campaigned JILL, Sail No. 56, at home
and abroad. In 1932, Johnson and JILL were part of the famous four-boat American squadron that was honored by King George VI for their victory in the British-American Cup at Cowes, in the Solent. JILL went on to win the Seawanhaka Cup, sailing in light airs on the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. The following year, Johnson and JILL won the Prince of Wales Trophy in Bermuda.

The Six Metre class of sailboats dates to 1907, when the International Rule was
introduced to the worldwide yacht-racing community. “Six Metre” does not refer to
hull length—JILL measures 36’8” overall, with a beam of 6’1” and a draft of
5’5”—but to a complicated formula that levels the racing field by controlling the
length, girth, freeboard and sail area of these so-called “one-design” boats.

The International Six Metre Association notes that the class has always been “a
hotbed for technical innovation, with the world’s leading yacht designers and sailors bringing often radical concepts and technical excellence to the fleet.” Six Metres competed in the Olympic Games from 1908 to 1952, and they often served as development boats for their larger cousins, the vaunted 12 Metre America’s Cup racers.

Six Metre racing blossomed in the 1920s and ‘30s. In 1975, an evolution of the
International Rule breathed new life into the class and today there is an active
global regatta circuit for both modern Open Division Six Metres as well as Classic
Division boats such as JILL. Altogether, some 1200 Six Metres have been built, of
which about 450 are still in existence.

The Six Metre class attracted some of the world’s best naval architects, including
William Fife and the Herreshoff family as well as Sparkman & Stephens. JILL is not only a true Gilded Age yacht of elegant lines, thanks to her sensitive rebuild she is also a “new” boat of extraordinary heritage.