Sometimes it takes nothing more than the gentle curve of a ships lines to set men on edge, indeed sometimes over the edge, as their desire to possess a thing of beauty overrides their common sense. Luckily for Dutchman Ed Kastelein this was not the case. Oh he was set on edge by the stunning beauty of the famous three-masted schooner Atlantic, but it was not beyond his means to recreate one of the most famous sailing boats of the early twentieth century, and that’s precisely what he did. Kastelein, working closely with the naval architect Doug Peterson to recreate the lines and yachting historian John Lammerts for historical accuracy and as a team, they created a replica of Atlantic that is as close to identical as the original as humanly possible.
To better understand the passion Kastelein had for Atlantic, we need to know more about the famous yacht. Atlantic was commissioned by New York Yacht Club member Wilson Marshall and was built in 1903 by Townsend and Downey who were based on Shooters Island, New York. Marshall retained William Gardner, one of the countries foremost yacht designers of that time, to design him a seaworthy yacht that was capable of setting new records and breaking old ones. From the moment Atlantic went to sea it was clear that she was an exceptionally beautiful and fast schooner. When a yacht in 1903 hits twenty knots during her sea trials, she is regarded as promising, but nobody could imagine that two years later this yacht would set a record that would stand for almost a century. That record was from Sandy Hook off the coast of New Jersey to The Lizard on England’s southwest coast as part of the Kaiser’s Cup Transatlantic race. In order to set a new record, Marshall hired the legendary yacht captain Charlie Barr. Barr had already won three America’s Cup’s as skipper of Columbia in 1899, Shamrock in 1901 and Reliance in 1903 and was considered the best not only because of his finesse behind the wheel, but also because of his ability to get the most out of every situation by pushing the yacht and crew right up to the limit, but not over it. The story goes that on the way across the Atlantic a big storm brewed and the yacht was straining against the strong winds. Wilson Marshall feared for his ship and wanted the crew to reduce sail, but Barr locked the owner in his cabin and continued to push on relentlessly. They finally made it to England in a time of 12 days, 4 hours, 1 minute, 19 seconds, an outright racing record that stood 75 years until Eric Tabarly’s 1980 crossing on his aluminum trimaran Paul Ricard. Barr’s monohull record stood for nearly a hundred years when finally in 1997 it was beaten by the yacht Nicorette which did the crossing in 11 days 13 hours 22 minutes.
