Gone with the wind - Australia's disappearing sailboat builders - Is it too late to save the trade?

Do you really want to talk to me?... I'm a bloody old has-been boatbuilder who maybe had 15 minutes of fame!" Now, Jim Swanson is a pretty quiet sort of bloke, so to get that many words out of him was really something. Unfortunately he sounded serious, so this yacht broker turned cub reporter initially wasn't too confident of being able to produce an interesting article about the Swanson brothers and their yachts.However, Jim turned 70 recently and must have mellowed overnight, as I finally got the big invite for what became a fascinating history lesson.They say that romance and the sea are a good mix... well, Jim's father Christian Svensen, a Norwegian rigger on a four-master, took permanent shore leave when the ship lost its main mast off Fremantle. The story goes that Christian met second-generation Australian, Alma, they gravitated to Sydney Harbour (where Christian worked in diving, wharf and bridge building) living around Abbotsford, Haberfield and Five Dock and producing a family of two girls and four boys. The younger three brothers, Ron, Ken and Jim, were to become 'the Swanson brothers' of boating fame, having anglicised the Svensen to Swanson.Things were tough back then so Jim and his mates first boats were not sailing craft but corrugated iron canoes flattened and rounded with a piece of timber front and back, with a thwart to keep the gunwales apart. The seams were sealed with bitumen off the road as it melted in the summer heat.DOING THEIR TIME
In the late 1940s, 16-year-old Jim took on a shipwright apprenticeship at Vinco's boatyard, famed for building the Blaxland and Vinco launches. "An eight-planker took two weeks to build and a nine-planker another couple of days," says Jim.Brother Ken also took on a trade, "becoming a really good joiner" according to Jim.Ron, "the brainy one", worked along the way with Wally Ward designing boats, leading to the Carmen design in the early 1960s.Around 1950 the first 'Swanson yacht' was built by Jim and Ken in brother Alan's backyard at Bankstown. Jim came across the design in a magazine and he and Ken literally built Cygnet, a 20ft long-keeled fractional sloop with jib topsail, from the ground up.Judging by the family photo album, brother Alan was not a gardener, and Cygnet was probably the only thing that grew in that garden. Ron then built a sistership.Once out of his apprenticeship, Jim took on a job with the Adelaide Steamship Company, then running coastal passenger cargo ships and bulk sugar ships. Part of Jim's duties was to keep the timber clinker lifeboats in survey. One of the company's apprentice shipwrights was Trade-A-Boat's foundation broker Bob Holmes, then a champion VJ sailor with brother Dick.Jim stayed with the Adelaide Steamship Company for a couple of years but was lured back to speedboats, as one of his fellow shipwrights at Ad Steam set up a used-car yard on Parramatta Road in Sydney and as a sideline ran Goodlear Speed Craft, with Jim doing the building.By this stage the three Swanson brothers had gravitated to the Middle Harbour Yacht Club - "the working man's club with the skiffies next door," Jim says - and Ron was building and doing up old boats to race at the club for himself and other members. One thing led to another and Ron was commissioned to build a couple of extended Stellas for wages only, with materials supplied.Soon followed "more serious stuff." Ron and Jim built two Lion class yachts designed by Arthur Robb "for Graham Newlands and the Henderson Springs bloke," Jim recalls. Ron became great sailing buddies with Newlands, whose yacht Siandra won the Sydney to Hobart Race in 1958 and 1960.The brothers then took on permanent premises at Jim O'Rourke's boatshed at the Spit on Sydney's Middle Harbour. During the days of O'Rourke's shed, Doug Brooker was an apprentice shipwright and one of the commissions was a 43ft Sparkman & Stephens design for Doug's father, Norm, called Sea Wind. That was followed by a S&S36 and then a 30ft half-tonner Defiance, which became the plug for the Defiance 30s built by Savage in Melbourne. (The original timber Defiance was launched in 1982 and by coincidence I now have it, fully restored and for sale).The Swanson brothers emerged from the 1950s as yachties who could not only sail but also design and build yachts, in the days when most yacht designers weren't professionally trained.Jim says: "Peter Cole was a sailmaker in an old church in Balmain, Bob Miller [later Ben Lexcen] was self-taught and always willing to try something new, and my brother Ron was a great mathematician - he was the brains and brother Ken and I were the foot soldiers!"Alan Payne was the exception and was a qualified shipwright and yacht designer, as was Warwick Hood, who worked with Alan."In 1963, 1964 and 1965 one of Payne's most famous designs, Freya, won the Sydney-Hobart. Swanson-built and crewed yachts came second in each of those races.In 1963 it was the Carmen class, Cavalier. In 1964 it was the 37ft Camille, which was aimed at representing Australia in the next Admiral's Cup in England."Admiral's Cuppers had to be at least 30ft on the wate rline and that's what our shoestring budget allowed," Jim says.Camille went on to compete in England in the 1965 Cup, skippered by Ron with sailmaker Laurie Mitchell and MHYC stalwart Frank Likely as part of the crew, in an Australian team including Caprice of Huon and Freya.Second in the 1965 Sydney-Hobart was Camelot, a sistership to Camille but with a bigger rig. (Another sistership, Mr Christian, hooked well-known Sydney yachtsman Peter Kurts into ocean racing).Finally, the breakthrough came when Cadence, a Carmen class yacht skippered by Jimmy Mason, won the 1966 Sydney-Hobart. Second was another Swanson yacht, Salome (a 33ft one-tonner now restored and owned by actor, Colin Friels).DEE WHY DAYS AND BEYOND
By this time, the Swanson brothers were operating out of a factory at Dee Why completed in 1963. "In those days we couldn't afford to be on the water and we had to build our own factory as well as build the boats," Jim says. "At least there were less interruptions being away from the water."The first two boats out of the new shed were the Carmen class Cavalier and Cadence... And so the Swansons had become 'production' timber yachtbuilders just as the fibreglass era was about to begin.Swarbricks in Western Australia, then timber merchants, started boatbuilding by constructing a few Carmens under licence to the Swansons, before turning to S&S designs.In the Sydney Daily Telegraph of October 13, 1967 (yes it was a Friday), it was reported that Swanson-built yachts had taken the first five places overall in the Montague Island Race, while line honours had gone to Norm Long's Matika, which was the first fibreglass Swanson 36. Cadence was second with Norm Brooker's timber Swanson 36, Moonbird, third, followed by Cavalier and Calliope.Jim laughs, "we were called the works team - the professional sailors - but really we were just hard-up boatbuilders making sure we got more work!"Over the years the Swanson sheds produced a number of well-known shipwrights, including Doug Brooker, Andy Moncreif, Bob Boreham, Peter Jaffrey and many others.The success of the Swanson 36, including a third by Matika in the 1967 Sydney-Hobart, plus the advent of fibreglass brought on a rapid expansion in the Swanson brothers' business and a move to the Wyong area.Other changes in the yacht-racing scene from RORC to the IOR rule, with its consequent rapid changes, saw the Swansons put their efforts into "good, strong, cruising yachts," Jim says.With the Swanson 36s being produced at a rapid rate (the first 10 or so were built by Phil Rudder, who was building the Nicholson 32s at the time), Ron set about designing a stable of yachts that Jim, Ken and the team put into production.People were asking for a daysailer, so along came the Swanson Dart 22 of which about 40 were built. Marj Belessis, who still writes a popular boating column for the Manly Daily in harbourside Sydney, printed a story about how Ron's mates had nicknamed his Dart Passing Wind and somehow the Yachting Association of NSW yacht register printed a typo swapping the 'D' for an 'F'... But it was a Middle Harbour Yacht Club boat after all!Then there was the Swanson 27, designed for JOG racing (where it found success) and distinctive with its 'bubble' deck. The moulds were sold to Melbourne, where a new deck was produced for the cruising version.The Swanson 32 was born when a customer asked for a smaller timber version of the 36, which became the plug for the fibreglass boat. Around 25-30 were eventually produced.But the best known of the Swansons were the three canoe-sterned cruising yachts, the 28, 38 and 42. Well over 100 of these craft were produced in total.A SWANSON EXPLOSION
The 10 years from 1965-75 witnessed an explosion of fibreglass yachts (and powerboats) and apart from the Swanson stable this era saw the market include the Endeavour 24, 26, 30; the Triton 24, 26, 28; Bruce Fairlie's Clansman 30, East Coast 31 and Cole 43; Compass Yachts' Southerly 23, Northerner/Compass 28, Westerly 26, Easterly 30 and Compass 29; and Jeff Baker's Bluebirds, Top Hats, Brolgas, Currawongs and Cape Barren Geese, to name just a few.Then in the mid '70s the successful racing yachts began to be built much lighter, with breakthrough designs such as the Farr 1104. As fibreglass materials cost $ per lb, these boats not only were faster but were also less expensive to build than their heavier predecessors and therefore proved popular in the marketplace.The new Mottles, Cavaliers, Northshores and Farr production models took over from the traditional, heavy yachts.Ron's design for John Arends, the medium displacement Arends 33 with shallow draft for cruising the Australian coast, was very popular in the early '80s with around 50 built. As with most yachts of that era, the Arends 33s were fully factory-finished, and consequently have retained consistent and good resale values.As well as building their fibreglass production models, the Swansons continued to build one-off orders for individual clients, including Dreamtime, a 67ft Frers design built in 1983 for Graham O'Neil. Dreamtime was a pocket maxi and apart from a good racing history, it also cruised the Pacific. Ken names it as his all-time favourite boat, while Jim chimes in, "if Bobby Holmes wants to give me a belated 70th birthday present then he can give me a copy of the photo of Dreamtime up in Alaska that hangs on his office wall!"CRUISING CLASS
Swanson yachts have done a lot of world travel and Jim shows me a classic postcard of the Swanson 42 ketch Time with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop.Another Swano 42, Onya of Gosford (now Resolution) has circumnavigated the globe as well as cruising the Pacific and competing in the Sydney-Hobart.Talking of long-distance adventures, I recall "the mad Russian", as Jim affectionately refers to him, who visited my office with an interpreter. Basically this was an adventurer who would climb the highest mountain, swim the coldest lake and cross the hottest desert. Never having sailed before, he had come to Australia with $60,000 cash to buy a yacht to circumnavigate the world. He bought a Swanson 36 and to everyone's amazement did manage to sail the world!Apart from building boats themselves, the Swanson brothers had a scheme where amateur boatbuilders under supervision could hire the moulds and factory space to build their own boats.In Seacraft magazine of September 1975 (when it was only $1.50 entry to the Melbourne Boat Show!), Ross Anderson described in full how he and his father built his own Swanson 32 in the Wyong factory over a four-week period - with Max and Barry Giblett supervising their efforts.His summary of costs was: mould and factory hire $1400; fibreglass and resin $2800; and plywood for bulkheads $300; adding up to a modest total of $4500.Around 1985, 21 years after opening their factory at Dee Why, "we ran out of puff," says Jim.Ron retired to "an alternative lifestyle", as he described it, in Tassie, where he designed and built his last boat SailHo. This little 22-footer was brought back to Pittwater after Ron's death in 1990 and is moored off Scotland Island.Ken retired to a hobby farm at Wyong and at 71 still goes sailing on his sailboard - a reminder of the old days, when the brothers used to build their own sailboards and go sailing on the Narrabeen Lakes, then near-deserted.Jim took up marine surveying: "what does a broken-down old boatbuilder do?" he asks, as a way of using his skills and keeping in touch.His business card reads: Master Shipwright, Marine Surveyor... To which I would add: Apprentice Raconteur!As for his sailing? Jim states: "occasionally, with my mates, and only out of sight of land."

troubadour said..
Probably the closest Jarkan went to production was the J24's in their hey day.

LooseChange said..






Somewhere out there is the lightest J24 in Aus, I remember the boys rolling the cloth of the second layer into the wet resin from the first layer thereby saving a ton of resin (wet into wet). That boat would have had so many corrector weights fitted if anyone had bothered to weigh it.
Good times were had by all.