VARG

a rebuilt, classic 8 metre from 1924

Owner: Kraig Carlstrom

The history of Varg – a story of near tragedy and a wonderful reconstruction by some of the best in Tasmania

In 1924 Johan Anker’s Norwegian yard constructed the 8 metre yacht, VARG at Asker, just south of Oslo on the Oslo fjord, for the Larsen family.

Interestingly, the Larsens commissioned new boats annually, alternating between William Fife and Johan Anker. The process must have nicely cross-fertilised Norwegian naval architecture with the English/Scottish scene.

Anker’s design training had come from Germany.

18 years earlier these two great designers had sat down together to create the International Metre Boat Rule, because extreme racing yachts pre 1906 were becoming so radical in design, they were falling apart.

The wing keel had been more or less invented, but the sail areas these yachts were expected to carry plus their very fine scantlings and excessive over-hangs caused them to break up.

The International Metre Boat Rule - a formula, in 3 various rules, designed to create more wholesome yachts, worked very nicely for competitive racing yachts right up until the mid-1980’s.

The first rule lasted from 1906 until 1920, the second from 1920 until 1933, and the third from 1933 until WW2.  So our VARG is a 2nd Rule International 8 metre class racing yacht.

For the 8 Metre class yachts, the longest overhangs were created in the early 1920’s with hulls typically around the 50ft mark,  but by WW2 with disappearing overhangs, the average 8 metre hull length was around 44ft.

Originally in 1906 there were 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, and finally 23 metre classes. Over time the most popular classes eventually became the 6’s, 8’s, 12’s and 15’s.

The famous, CAMBRIA is a fine example of the 23metre class, a little larger than a J Class.

All this is to explain just what we see in VARG: A sleek, uncluttered hull that looks fast and purposeful and epitomises the 1920’s era perfectly. As the wind builds to over 10 knots she heels right over, then stops and keeps on sailing higher and higher, surprising many. Then there is that very fine rounded counter stern that most 8’s don’t have.

For us, it is all about aesthetics and beauty.

We love the period mitre cut-off white sails, lots of subtle bronze winches and fittings, varnished red mahogany everywhere all  surrounded by silver teak decks.

 This yacht is a day racer for a crew of 6 or 7.

It isn’t ever going to the South Pole and it doesn’t need to look like a marine chandlery shop gone mad, so simplicity rules.

We found VARG rotting away on Sydney Harbour. She was sinking and had been stripped of all fittings, mast boom and rig.

In fact, her stern had been chopped off in the 1970’s when an owner had tried to convert her into a single handed cruising boat… bad idea! He had also managed to clad her planked hull in plywood ruining the planks, and had added some very crude over-sized badly fitted timber floors plus a high cabin top. Well, that went well, didn’t it!

It was a great pity, as VARG in the past, had some truly great owners.

The Norwegian Larsen family owned a shipping company and had by late 1924 moved VARG down to Cowes in the UK to race in the 8 metre fleet there.

 By 1926 she was noticed and purchased by Lord Forster who had just returned to England from a 5 year stint as Australia’s Governor General. Lord Forster had three sons all unfortunately killed in WW1.

To buck him up in 1920 he was offered a 3 year term as Australia’s Governor General.

Australia had been looking for a sporting enthusiast instead of the string of legal types normally sent. The 3 year posting became a 5 year one as Lord Forster was very popular here, creating numerous yachting cups, cricket cups etc.

The Forster Cup won by VARG in 1928 when she was first brought out to Sydney by ship, remains today in the cupboards of the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron.

This cup was the cup to win before the Sydney/Hobart race had its beginnings.

It was for the fastest yachts in any state - contested every 4 years.

VARG won it again in 1932, but lost it later after measuring showed changes made to the keel and rudder post now rated her at 8.2 metres.

Sailing her at the time was the young Alexis Albert, who was to become Sir Alexis Albert. He owned VARG right up until the 1960’s.

The Albert family business and wealth came from music, mainly for pianos in the 1920’s but later as recording studios in the 1960’s … think AD/DC and rock and roll. So VARG was well looked after by full time professionals.

The Albert family had renamed VARG to NORN, and she retained that name whilst in their possession.

We changed it back to VARG as by 2000 the Albert's had another new yacht racing on Sydney Harbour called NORN.

Norns, by the way, were Norse female gods and the idea was that you somehow identified with and followed one of their 5 different personalities.

The Albert family deserve lots of recognition because not only did they create numerous yachting cups, but the Sydney Heritage Fleet, as their pride and joy had been donated the Albert's magnificent large yacht, BOOMERANG.

The old Albert home, BOOMERANG in Elizabeth Bay is unquestionably one of the finest in Sydney.

Some people aren’t aware of it but it was Robert Albert, Alexi’s son who provided most of the finances for the restoration of the JAMES CRAIG.

Once we had purchased the old wreck that was VARG we had her trucked down to the Wilson shed at Cygnet, whilst we waited 4 years, for GLORIA OF HOBART to be finished.

Meanwhile there was much to do.

We commissioned naval architect, and 8 metre expert, David Vieira in Lisbon Portugal to recreate VARG’s 23 sheets of drawings from originals held in the Anker collection at the Oslo Maritime Museum.

Then we went on the hunt for suitable construction timbers.

Fine furniture creator, Mark Bishop from Stanley found us a very large Celery Top tree on a privately owned coupe of land up on the Arthur River, as the available southern trees were far too small. This created the wood keel and backbone.

Our Huon Pine for planking came from Bern Bradshaw at Lynchford, Queenstown.
Honduras Mahogany and Burmese Teak were purchased from Caboulture, Queensland, whilst our Sitka spruce for spars came from Sitka Alaska via Holland. Green Blue Gum for the ribs was sourced locally.

Finally, over a 6 year period, Michael Wilson and Warren Innes painstakingly recreated VARG, from the wood keel up, at last bolting on the old lead keel from the original Varg.

But nothing was ever easy, even the lead keel was out of shape, with cavities inside. It required 18 new keel,11/4 inch bolt holes to be drilled through the 4 tons of lead.

On the starboard side, where the lead was bulbous, it had to be planed off, collected and faired back into the port side to keep the correct weight. The planking was complicated as well; Warren Innes telling us it took as long to select the right plank as it did to shape and fit it.

The deck was created in 3 layers.
Whitebait varnished Huon pine, then marine ply, then dynel cloth, then the mahogany and teak, but all layers had to be screwed and glued and every screw head position going into the deck beams had to be recorded to prevent screws from clashing.

I could write pages on the attention to detail lavished on this yacht by Michael and Warren. The boat is just so well coated up internally to prevent future mould. We were just so fortunate to have these caring professionals work on our project at the pinnacle of their careers.

To give you an idea of the dedication: Warren hand-made the 3500 copper boat nails from copper rod, hand-beating the heads; whilst Michael worked with feeler gauges and hand scrapers to shape the Celery Top wooden floors.

Over at Andrew Denman’s shed at Kettering, the mast, boom and spinnaker pole were expertly fashioned from the Sitka Spruce, and finished off with 13 sprayed coats of sealer and 13 coats of varnish.

We were lucky to have Sean Langman come down from Sydney to do the rig, whilst Col Anderson in Melbourne created the beautiful mitre cut sails complete with hand sewn cringles.
Engineer, Ed Gourmley in the hills here at Cygnet helped with lots of the bronze finishing of fittings that had either come from Portugal or were made locally by Apco in Hobart.

Over that 6 year period, the photographer one of us, just about drove everyone crazy, constantly taking pictures, recording the progress to showcase everyone’s effort and dedication.

In the back of his mind was a book, which in the end turned out to be a very large, very expensive hand-made coffee table book. Bruce Stannard very kindly helped out with the words.

All it took was a trip to Canberra to the National Library for them to immediately purchase a copy. They then directed other State libraries to follow. Other Maritime museums were bought copies and there were a number of private copies purchased here and overseas, so we are happy that all that effort has been properly recorded for the future, especially with the Wilson family closing up shop after running a fine family business with a great reputation here in Cygnet since 1863.

On two occasions now, we have visited the Australian Wooden Boat Show, where it’s always a delight to let people have a good look over VARG.

World Titles

As we raced and enjoyed VARG it came as bit of a no-brainer that a trip to Europe to race in the Annual 8 Metre World Titles was something too good to be missed.

VARG known in Norway as “The one that got away” made Oslo the perfect choice, and when a series there was set up to celebrate their sailor king, based around King Harald’s 80th birthday, we didn’t think twice.

King Harald still helms the green hulled SIRA a yacht built for his father by Johan Anker in 1939.

He’s lucky to have the cream of the Royal Norwegian Navy as crew.
Bruce Stannard arranged free shipping for VARG from Melbourne to Bremerhaven Germany and back on Wilhelmsen Lines. The other costs were ours.

 We went with two crews, one from Cygnet and one from Sydney.

 Racing was off the very beautiful Hanko Island in the Oslo Fjord. Thirty three 8 metre yachts attended from all over Europe. All had young very strong experienced crews. There were four 8’s older than VARG but the rest were newer in design or were modern 8's with wing keels and every go fast fitting you could imagine plus state of the art very expensive modern sails.

Naturally with older crew members and a basically original fitted out boat, we were never going to set the world on fire but we always managed to beat the older boats. Still, as we knew, it was always going to be about the nightly parties and dinners with the highlight being the formal reception on King Harald’s ship, the SS NORGE.

We started off in Copenhagen, tripped around northern Norway then crossed over to see relatives in Stockholm, finally returning to Copenhagen completing a 6000km circle.

So these days we are back to club racing, and as we all know, nothing really beats the Channel especially when you get caught out in 160km hour winds, are on the rocks and need to be rescued, as happened in the first year after VARG’s launch from the Wilson shed.

VARG is a physically demanding yacht and really needs young or middle-aged sailors to be truly competitive.

Over the last 6 years we have had only one regular sailor with us from beginning to end - Steve Ferguson. Thanks Steve for all your dedication!

 Of course, there have been so many other brilliant crew members male and female, some very experienced, and we have enjoyed every moment of their company, but most of us for one reason or the other have other demands and need to move on.

Finding a regular weekly crew of 7 is really quite draining and so for this reason we have recently put VARG on the open market just in time for Covid. We have had two offers but nothing serious as yet. It could be a while.

That’s our story.

We still love our yacht, even when it is on its ear and especially the view across the open uncluttered deck. After every race as we motor away from VARG we thank her for a lovely day out. Very often by this time, we are munching on Elaine Jacket’s very potent delicious tasting Xmas cake and looking forward to a beer at the club.

Thanks for reading.

Carolyn Mason and Kraig Carlstrom.

Archrivals Varg & Gomez, neck and neck, Port Cygnet

Varg streaming upwind in a Port Cygnet Sailing Club Race

Varg, Cowes 1927

Varg, in sad shape, arriving at Wilson's Boatyard, Cygnet, ready for a new life

Varg is currently for sale, see BoatSales Tasmania for further details