Sir Thomas Glen-Coats/Alfred Mylne & Co. International 8-Metre 1936/2015

HELEN is the first in a remarkable triptych of late 1930s 3rd International Rule 8-Metres drawn by experienced designer to the Rule and Olympic gold medal winning helmsman Sir Thomas Glen-Coats; built on the Clyde in consecutive years at the Mylne family’s Bute Slip Dock Co. yard, where Glen-Coats was a director and major backer. They were among the last full keel 8mRs built in Britain and represent the pinnacle of truly classic 8-Metre design. At the end of her initial class-racing days, conversion by her original builder to an able, and of course fast, cruiser-racer kept HELEN very much alive, so that when the 8-Metre Class revival began in the early 2000s, she was a natural subject for restoration and application of the subtle authenticity and performance treatments allowed under the World Championship Sira Cup and Neptune Trophy rules for boats built before 1960. HELEN is very well equipped and optimised to be competitive at the next major 8mR championship, and simply to be enjoyed as a supremely elegant and fleet of foot day/ weekend racer-cruiser.

2014-2015 – FAIRLIE YACHTS, HAMBLE, SOUTHAMPTON
- Major centreline rebuild
- Removed degraded timber elements
- Replaced backbone
- Stem & Sternpost also replaced
- Bronze keelbolts replaced
- Reduced overall weight in line with original racing displacement and trim

2014 – FAIRLIE YACHTS, HAMBLE, SOUTHAMPTON
- Post-purchase mini refit in preparation for Solent racing

2006-2007 – OCEAN YACHT COMPANY, PENPOL, CORNWALL
- Restoration work
- Re-conversion to “straight-eight” from cruiser/ racer
- New deck
- New rig designed by Groupe Faroux, Cannes; built by Pasqui, Villefranche-sur-Mer
- Long-listed in the 2007/08 Classic Boat Awards

ALFRED MYLNE & CO./ BUTE SLIP DOCK NO. 378

Between 1936 and 1938, Sir Thomas Glen-Coats, Bart. - the last member of his fabulously wealthy cotton thread producing family to dedicate a considerable part of his life to yachts and yachting - designed and had built for himself three very potent 3rd Rule International 8-Metres, HELEN (8K33, 1936), SAPPHO (8K18, 1937), and PANDORA (8K35, 1938).

All three were speedily yet beautifully constructed by the Mylne 'Bute Slip Dock' yard at Ardmaleish, and were among the last full keel 8mRs built in Britain. Two of them, HELEN and PANDORA, have survived to be restored and join the remarkable late 20th/ early 21st Century worldwide revival of interest in these most elegant of performance classic yachts.

There must have been a fascination for this highly competent and experienced, so-called 'amateur' designer in applying four decades of honing his craft in and in association with the Alfred Mylne office in Glasgow, to find increments of improvement within the competitive and strong Clyde 8-Metre fleet of the 30s, and in contributing to the health of that fleet with newbuilds.

There may well also have been an element of necessity involved - for Glen-Coats was also a Mylne director and the financial backer to Alfred Mylne and his brother Charles when they decided to purchase the Ardmaleish yard in 1911 - in keeping the yard's skilled workforce busy, and together; extending the winter boatbuilding season well into summer: HELEN was not launched until Monday 29th June 1936, and made her racing debut on Saturday 4th of July at Dunoon Town Regatta in a fleet of 8 boats.

Hypothetically, Glen-Coats had the ability to throw limitless funds at these projects, but unlike Glasgow shipbuilder John Stephen - during the same period experimenting both hydro and aero dynamically with fascinatingly radical 6-Metres (one was quickly converted to a motorboat, but one pre-dated Olin Stephens’s INTREPID by 30 years) - this trio of Glen-Coats/ Mylne/ Bute Slip Dock Eights remained true to the norm, with no vices. Beautiful, classic 3rd Rule 8-Metres.

Of course, empirically conceived improvements in already relatively conservative designs might well be undone in a smart tack, expert helming, deft boat handling and sail trimming, and luck. And so it panned out.

Glen-Coats and his Sandbank professional, Jimmy Blair - who had been first mate aboard Tom Sopwith's J-Class ENDEAVOUR before she crossed to Newport RI for the 1934 America's Cup match, and enjoyed a reputation as a fine sail trimmer - had a reasonable, if late 1936 season on the Clyde with HELEN. Then they campaigned her on the French Riviera in the spring of 1937 while SAPPHO was being built at Ardmaleish.

They fared better with SAPPHO in the 1937 Clyde season, but HELEN was sold to fellow Royal Gourock Yacht Club member (Glen-Coats was Commodore), Peter Simpson, and with Peter came his wife Margaret (née Graham), a skilful racing sailor brought up aboard her father’s beautiful William Fife III cruiser/ racer VALORA – now better known on the Mediterranean classic regatta circuit by her original name, EVA. By 1939 Margaret was able to get the best out of HELEN, with the first of the Glen-Coats’s triptych becoming quite a thorn in the flesh of the third, PANDORA. HELEN was the top Clyde 8-Metre of the last season before war would put a halt to Clyde yachting for five years.

The Clyde 8-Metre fleet enjoyed a brief period of post-war continuation as the only UK fleet, but the austerity of the time saw no new-builds, and it was clear that without the late 1930s Glen-Coats/ Bute Slip Dock trio this may not have happened. The last 8-Metre class starts on the Clyde until a late 1960s-early 1970s revival were in 1951, by which time the Simpson females, mother, Margaret, and her married daughters, Sheila Hinge and Molly Mackay all had an International Dragon each in the rapidly growing Clyde fleet.

On being sold in 1950 to Renfrewshire garageman and car dealer James Peters, HELEN was nicely converted at Bute Slip Dock to a cruiser/racer with a slightly taller house and neat doghouse, and a 4-cylinder Parsons Ford petrol auxiliary motor. Peters was a regular competitor in Clyde Cruising Club events, in particular the longer distance races in which HELEN could easily take line honours. She finished second on corrected time in the 1952 Crinan to Tobermory Race, and in 1954 won both legs of this once famous event: from Gourock to Ardrishaig, and from Crinan to Tobermory. During his later years of ownership, ‘Jimmy’ Peters was CCC Rear Commodore and would later become Commodore in the 1970s.

When Peters purchased the Morgan Giles 41 ft cruiser/ racer CLARION in 1963, HELEN crossed the North Channel to a new life in Northern Ireland, initially at Donaghadee with County Down farmer and ship chandler Basil Aldwell who had been a World War II carrier-based Royal Navy aviator and prisoner of war in Singapore. Then, from 1965 at Whiterock, Strangford Lough, with Doctors Michael and Christopher Green, members of the Irish Cruising Club.

HELEN’s cruising exploits from Whiterock are beautifully described in W.M. ‘Winkie’ Nixon’s encyclopaedic I.C.C. History, ‘To Sail the Crested Sea’. They seem to have had a policy of allowing her off the leash at the beginning of a cruise to get as far away as possible, then cruise the destination more slowly and dash home, all within the constraints of their available vacation time. Cruises included:

1965
North to the Outer Hebrides in company with AINMARA.
- St Kilda (rode out a severe westerly gale in Village Bay)
- North Harbour, Scalpay
- Stornoway

1966
South to Brittany.
- Morbihan - Cabaret - Belle Ile
" ... a glorious cruise, their somewhat esoteric craft notching some really good passages, and ashore the parties were all they should have been..."

1967
- 920 miles logged round Ireland anti-clockwise.
- Winner I.C.C. Round Ireland Cup

1969
Outer Hebrides after a rough Minch passage

1972
Orkney Islands
Winner I.C.C. Fortnight Cup

Not much seems to be known about HELEN’s life through the remainder of the 1970s and 1980s, until she resurfaced in the Mediterranean, possibly at Palma de Mallorca in the 1990s, then in German ownership at Port Gallice, Antibes, France in the early 2000s. She participated in early editions of Les Voiles d’Antibes before arriving for a 2006-2007 restoration at Brian Pope’s Ocean Yacht Company, Penpol, Cornwall. Between 2007 and 2014 HELEN returned to the Mediterranean classics circuit in the ownership of Paulo Zannoni.

In current ownership since 2014, HELEN has enjoyed much TLC to keep her both healthy and competitive into the future, particularly 2014-2015 at Fairlie Yachts, described in more detail above. HELEN has participated in Solent 8-Metre events, at European and World Championships – including, in 2024, a return to the Clyde for the first time in over 60 years. She remains the potent force that Sir Thomas Glen-Coats planned, and is one of the most beautiful of 8-Metres.

©2025 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

"In 1911, Alfred Mylne and his brother Charles, with financial backing from Sir Thomas 'Tid' Glen-Coats, purchased the yacht-building yard at Ardmaleish Point on the Isle of Bute, naming it the Bute Slip Dock Co. Tid Glen-Coats, a close friend and accomplished amateur yacht designer, shared Mylne's passion for yachting and was a strong advocate for his work. Their collaboration was born from mutual respect and a shared understanding of yacht design excellence, with Tid often consulting Mylne on his own projects and contributing valuable insights."

[From 'Crafting Elegance - The Golden Era of Scottish Yacht Design', a 2025 Scottish Maritime Museum exhibition]

Born in 1878 into one of the wealthiest of non-royal yachting families thanks to a fortune made in the worldwide production of thread by J & P Coats - patrons of Fife, Watson, and Mylne to the tune of probably 1000s of tons - Thomas Glen-Coats was able to immerse himself in his passion for racing yachts and their design. Friendship with Alfred Mylne worked nicely both ways and starting from the successful Clyde 30 Linear Rater Restricted Class PALLAS of 1906, Glen-Coats designed close to a metre boat a year, 6-Metres, 8-Metres and 12-Metres, for himself and some close friends until 1938, though with breaks for the First World War and between 1926 and 1936.

When the 12-Metre races for the 1908 London Olympic Games had to be held on the Clyde because the only 12mRs to the then new International Rule were there, it was Glen-Coats's HERA (R. McAlister & Son, 1908) that took the gold medal from Charles McIver's Mylne designed MOUCHETTE, also built by McAlister. His 6-Metre CYNTHIA (McAlister, 1910) was the wonder of 1910-11 on the Clyde, the Crouch, and the French Riviera, and the 6-Metre ARETHUSA (Bute Slip Dock, 1914) was Clyde class champion in 1919. In 1924 his 6-Metre ECHO (B.S.D.) was one of the victorious British-American Cup team on Long Island Sound, New York in her build year, and in 1926 his 12-Metre IRIS (B.S.D.) was the top 12 on the Clyde.

The end of a decade-long hiatus in yacht design and ownership approximately coincided with his mature years marriage in 1935, when the story of HELEN and her late 1930s 8-Metre cousins began. Sir Thomas Glen-Coats died aged 75 in 1954.

©2025 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Mahogany carvel planking
- Bronze screw and copper rivet fastened
- Iroko and laminated mahogany centreline structure (new 2015)
- Sawn oak and laminated mahogany frames (some new in 2015)
- Steamed oak timbers (some new in 2015)
- Wood floors (2015)
- Lead ballast keel
- Bronze keelbolts (2015)
- Teak laid deck on marine plywood substrate (2007)
- Teak and mahogany superstructures (2007)

GENERAL
- Teak laid deck
- Varnished covering boards

FROM AFT
- Bronze ensign socket
- Bronze mooring fairleads port and starboard
- 1 x Bronze and raw teak mooring fairlead on king plank
- Elasticated teak cleat anti-snagging blocks
- 4 x Bronze through deck bushes for running backstays
- 4 x Leathered ash blocks
- Tiller
- Teak slatted helm seats port & starboard

COCKPIT
- Low profile coamings; Tufnol capping
- Teak sole boards; manual bilge pump under
- Athwartships helm bench
- 1 x Antal 48 bronze mainsheet winch on stainless steel bracket
- Canvas sheet bins under side decks
- 2 x Raymarine repeaters at forward bulkhead
- 2 x Teak steps

SIDE DECKS
- 4 x Harken 50 bronze winches
- Bronze sheaves port & starboard
- 6 x Bronze fairleads
- Bronze foresail tracks at covering boards; ash and bronze blocks
- 2 x Holmatro 46 bronze winches

MYLNE STYLE HOUSE
- Sliding companionway hatch
- Deck prisms port & starboard
- 2 x Ash blocks on bronze padeyes port & starboard
- 2nd Bronze foresail tracks port and starboard
- Deck prisms port & starboard
- 2 x Holmatro 36 bronze winches on deck port & starboard

MAST POSITION
- Chainplates outboard

FOREDECK
- Sliding varnished forehatch
- 2 x Bronze fairleads
- Raw teak and bronze mooring cleat at king plank
- Spinnaker pole stowage port & starboard
- Bronze mooring fairleads port & starboard

GROUND TACKLE
- Radiused blades Danforth type anchor
- Stowed under cabin sole
- Chain and warp

- 3 x Steps down from companionway
- Fiddled sideboards port & starboard; stowage under
- Raw teak slatted 'park' bench seating port & starboard; stowage under
- 2 x Deckhead lamps
- 4 x Deck prisms

RIG
- Spruce mast and boom (2007)
- Designed by Groupe Faroux, Cannes, France
- Built by Gerard Pasqui, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
- Stainless steel rod rigging

SAILS - ALL BY NORTH GOSPORT (UK) LOFT
- Mainsail Contender OD C-Cut 7.52 Polykote PW (2024)
- Light/Medium Genoa Contender OD C-Cut 4.46 Polykote PW (2024)
- Medium/Heavy Genoa Contender OD C-Cut 6.5 Polykote PW (2024)
- S2 Spinnaker SuperLite/Kote SK 75 CTDR (2024)
- Light Genoa Contender OD C-Cut 3.8 Polykote PW (2022)
- Medium/Heavy Genoa Contender OD C-Cut 6.5 Polykote PW (2022)
- S1.5 Spinnaker SuperLite/Kote SL 50 CTDR (2022)
- Mainsail Contender OD C-Cut 7.52 Polykote PW (2019)
- No.2 Genoa Contender OD C-Cut 7.52 Polykote PW (2019)
- Light/Medium Genoa Contender RSQ 4.55 Polykote ( 4-10 knts TWS) (2018)
- Medium/Heavy Genoa Contender 6.5 Polykote (9-15 knts TWS) (2018)
- S2 Spinnaker SuperLite/Kote SK 75 CTDR (10-20 knts TWS) (2018)
- S1.5 Spinnaker SuperLite/Kote SL 50 CTDR (TWS 4-14 knts) (2018)
- Light/Medium Genoa PolyKote 4.46 CTDR (2017)
- Medium/Heavy Genoa PolyKote 5.46/6.5oz CTDR (2017)
- No.2 Genoa PolyKote 7.52 CTDR (2017)
- Jib 4 PolyKote 7.52 CTDR (2016)

- 12 V 'House' battery in saloon

- Raymarine repeaters at forward cockpit