The Slow Food Movement started in Italy many years ago, with its admirable ideal in the notion that the gentle preparation and leisurely cooking - preferably of locally sourced ingredients - was best complemented by then eating the simple feast with leisurely style, in good company and pleasant surroundings.
Or as we’d put it nowadays: “Slow Food Good, Fast Food Bad”.
But virtuous and sensible as all that is, we never thought to see the same general philosophy transferred to the classic racing yacht scene, particularly in connection with Bristol, Rhode Island’s Herreshoff Manufacturing Company. For that was the powerhouse of yacht design genius Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848-1938), who created many of the fastest boats of his era, including some startlingly extreme but very successful America’s Cup defenders.
In a league of his own, and sometimes in a world of his own too – Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, the creator of winning boats
THE WIZARD OF BRISTOL
Captain Nat, the Wizard of Bristol, was a towering genius over the international sailing scene. So if you wanted to be a yacht designer yourself, as did his son L Francis Herreshoff (1890-1972), it was quite a challenge being so closely related to the great man. Indeed, at stressful times, Captain Nat personally found that just being himself could be quite a challenge, and in such crises his family and colleagues would pack him off to Bermuda by steamer to see out the worst of the winter in sunlit recuperation.
L Francis Herreshoff – it wasn’t easy being the son of Nat Herreshoff while trying to be a successful yacht designer in your own right
Nevertheless the younger Herreshoff also pursued the art and craft of naval architecture, and largely independently too. But where Herreshoff Senior could eschew beauty in favour of speed to such an extent that some of his boats were a case of “handsome is as handsome does”, the son seems to have embraced beauty above all else, creating elegant curves and characterful concepts that he then tried to fit into some boat specification or rating rule.
It was fine when he had a relatively free rein, as in his most famous creation, the eye-catching 72ft clipper-bowed ketch Ticonderoga (originally Tioga II) of 1936. She was so laden with extra goodies and ornamentation that, when launched, she floated way below her original designed marks.
The 1935 L Francis Herreshoff-designed 12 Metre Mitena in her sea sailing days on the New England coast, one of the last of her class to be steered by a mighty tiller
The inclusion of an exceptionally long canoe-sterned counter on Mitena may have been a Francis Herreshoff reaction to the relatively straight sheerline constraints encouraged by the Third International Rule, but it resulted in extra weight where it emphatically was least beneficial
THE WEIGHT CHALLENGE OF EXTRA COMFORTS AND GADGETS
But like the similarly-afflicted John B Kearney-designed 1963 Tyrrell-built 54ft Helen of Howth, which owner Perry Greer loaded with spares for everything including spares for spares, together with many creature comforts, “Big Ti” was liked by many, and could give a surprisingly good account of herself in offshore racing when conditions suited.
And the acclaim for Ticonderoga was certainly a balm for the bruised spirit of L Francis Herreshoff in 1936. For the previous year, having served time as a trainee with his father’s rival designer Starling Burgess, he’d designed the International 12 Metre Mitena to be built by his father’s firm, as Captain Nat was now somewhat slowed by the age of 88. Consequently the mighty Herreshoff Manufacturing Company found themselves launching, in 1935, what was to become known as “the slowest 12 Metre ever built”.
Two icons of Great Lakes Sailing – Mitena headed under the Mackinac Bridge
PUSHING THE LIMITS OF THE 12 METRE RULE
For although Scandinavian and British designers had reached broad consensus on the parameters of what a successful 12 Metre should look like, Mitena was only the tenth Third Rule 12 Metre to be built in the US, and L Francis Herreshoff just had to push things out a bit, with his 72ft overall length making the uniquely canoe-sterned Mitena 2ft longer than the supposedly longest-of-all, the Mylne-designed 70ft Jenetta that was to appear in 1939, and has been recently restored in Germany.
A serious racing proposition wouldn’t go for a luxuriously-cushioned cockpit, but Mitena was undoubtedly a successful fun boat
If you wondered what handling that tiller might be like when setting the spinnaker in quite a brisk breeze, here’s your answer…..
Mitena coming into port after winning the Chicago-Mackinac Race, the “Fastnet of the Great Lakes”
But the lack of wider knowledge of the existence of Mitena in the Jenetta claim is understandable. For after the excruciating experience of knowing his aged father had been aware of the new boat’s relative lack of performance, L Francis Herreshoff’s only 12 Metre design eventually went in 1961 from the New England coast to ownership at Port Huron on the Great Lakes which – despite it being the area where Ted Turner’s 1979 Fastnet Race storm-conquering overall winner Tenacious was built – is something of another planet for sea sailors, notwithstanding the fame of the Chicago-Mackinac Race.
Party time aboard Mitena, with a classy Chris Craft runabout in the background
THE SUPERSTAR OF THE GREAT LAKES
Thus Mitena’s star role on the lakes was quite the thing fifty years ago, and included Line Honours in the iconic 333-mile Chicago-Mackinac, which is by no means a cake walk. And there was something about her unique status that made her a fun boat, not least because, as one of the last 12 Metres to use tiller steering, the very act of helming was quite something in itself.
CRUNCH TIME SINCE 2015
Possibly the most recent photo of Mitena, this reveals that serious TLC is now needed
Interrupted restoration. The sudden stop in the Mitena re-planking project – working from the bottom – is painfully evident here
But she needed increasing maintenance for at one stage she was sunk, but they kept her going and in 2015 a major re-build got under way. But that had only got halfway towards replacing the planking on the starboard side before personal circumstances brought it to a halt, and the word from one of our Roving Reporters is that a story is circulating in cyber-space offering the now very tired Mitena for sale, and possibly for quite a while now.
We’re told she has been a popular feature of Great Lakes sailing for decades, she is for sale as being a product of the great Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, and yes indeed, the USP is that she is “the slowest 12 Metre ever built”.
