SAPHENA

SAPHENA is a 32’ gaff-rigged ketch designed by Hugh Angleman & built in Yokohama, Japan in 1966. I bought her in 2005 from friend & sailmaker Jim Brink. She was painted entirely white & looked like a modern fiberglass sailboat, a condition I set about rectifying, stripping most of the paint off of her, exposing the beautiful mahogany hull & clear fir spars. With a coat of dark green topside paint & new wood laid decks she began to look more like the salty traditional boat I new her to be. An ongoing project (aren’t they all?), I replaced her wire shrouds & turnbuckles with deadeyes & lanyards with Dynama core having four strands of hempex laid around it. I removed the stainless bands on the mast & replaced them with wooden cross trees & trestle trees for the shroud eyes to land on. I had a new tanbark mainsail made with all the traditional handwork and removed the old clunking diesel engine replacing it with an electric motor just in time to get her to the yard for transom and plank replacement.