Luke & Co 38 ft Bermudan Yawl 1906/2016

CIRIS is a highly attractive and practical classic yacht at this size that comes with a fabulous pedigree in design, build, and ownership provenance - and in restoration and refit treatment. The Luke family of boat designers and builders was legendary on Hampshire’s Hamble River for elegance and stout construction, and around the turn of this century – 100 years on – the late Ed Burnett designed most of her important upgrades, including re-ballasting and a super-efficient yawl rig (she’s been bermudan-rigged since c1948). In current ownership, CIRIS has been a family summer daysailer and weekender from the River Fal in Cornwall, and yard maintained and upgraded each winter.

REFIT WORK 2022-2026 (Mylor, Falmouth)
- Replacement standing rigging
- Replacement bronze mizzen chainplates

REFITS TO 2016 (Creekside, Dartmouth)
- Removal of existing transom stern and rudder
- Complete restoration of the counter
- including new frames and aft deck
- Re-ballasting with lead keel replacing iron & lead
- naval architecture by Ed Burnett
- New rudder stock in stainless steel
- Improvements to the rudder shape
- Removal of the existing aft hatch
- replaced with 2 x flush deck hatches
- New main mast and mizzen mast by Collars
- New rig designed by Ed Burnett

EARLIER REFITS 1990-2000s
- Iroko on marine plywood deck
- Planking and frames replacement as required

CIRIS was launched into the Hamble River on Monday 13th August 1906, apparently ready to sail. The following day her first owner, Walter S. Winans, introduced his new gaff yawl to fellow (now Royal) Motor Yacht Club members on a cruise in company from their new floating clubhouse – the former Admiralty paddle steamer ENCHANTRESS in its first season moored off Netley, Southampton Water – back to her birth river in time for the annual Bursledon regatta.

These were the days when yachtbuilders almost couldn’t build fast enough to satisfy demand: CIRIS was the 6th newbuild launch that year from Luke & Co’s Hamble Point yard. For Winans, she was replacing his previous, much larger Michael Ratsey designed, Summers & Payne built c.100 ft steel yawl LAETITIA, sold in 1903 to operate commercially in South America for a Gibraltar-based owner.

CIRIS has the recognisably attractive profile and appearance of the late Victorian and Edwardian cruising yachts built in the Southampton area, in particular by Luke and by Summers & Payne. She’s a smaller sister of the well-known in recent decades on the Mediterranean classic regatta circuit 62 ft gaff yawl VERONIQUE – also designed by Albert R. Luke and built by Luke & Co in 1907.

65-year-old Walter Scott Winans was born at Baltimore, Maryland, USA into a remarkable railroad dynasty, and related by family marriages to the artist James McNeill Whistler. He was the youngest son of American railroad engineering pioneer Ross Winans, and the youngest brother of Thomas DeKay and William Louis Winans who between 1843 and 1851 executed their father’s multimillion-dollar contract with Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to build the Moscow to St. Petersburg railway. Having made their fortunes, they then worked with their father in designing and building a series of four experimental cigar shaped ships, the last of which was built at Isle of Dogs on the River Thames in the mid-1860s – perhaps coinciding with CIRIS’s first owner, their young brother, settling in England.

The Motor Yacht Club’s Netley, Southampton Water location may well have had a bearing on her next ownership from 1917 by Lt.-Col. Charles William Henry Crichton of Netley Castle (his father, a Royal Yacht Squadron member and Commodore of the Royal Southern YC, had re-modelled the castle from ruin to family home). Crichton was an action man of empire: a decorated career soldier, wounded in both the Boer and First World Wars; and a keen yachtsman - winner of a gold medal at the 1908 Olympic yachting regatta off Ryde crewing aboard the G.U. Laws designed and owned International 6-Metre DORMY.

Then, from 1920, CIRIS passed through a succession of ownerships on the south, south east and north east coasts of England:

- 1920-1923: F.G.T. Dawson, Hamble (mooring: Hamble)
- 1923-1930: C.S. Davey, West Drayton (mooring: Brightlingsea)
- 1926: Rig changed to gaff cutter
- 1930-1932: Robert H. Pershouse (mooring: Aldeburgh [Cdre AYC])
- 1932-1935 Harry C. Ellis, Chelmsford (mooring: Burnham-on-Crouch?)
- 1935-1936 Geoffrey D. Burton, Rugby (mooring: Burnham-on-Crouch?)
- 1936-1947 Charles R. Beveridge, London
- 1947-1949 Mr & Mrs D. Muirhead, Billingshurst (mooring: Bosham)
- c1948: Rig changed to bermudan sloop
- 1949-1950 Mrs Phyllis Millar, Horsham, Sussex (mooring: Bosham?)
- 1950-1956 Mr & Mrs Kenneth Millar (mooring: Bosham?)
- 1956-1962 Charles D. Pledger, Heybridge Basin (brokerage boat?)
- 1961-1964 Wallasea Bay Yacht Station Ltd, Rochford (brokerage boat?)
- 1964-1970 Jack A. Mills, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (mooring: Blyth)
- 1970-1977 Herbert E. Cracknell, Bromley (mooring: Queenborough)
- 1977-1989 Raymond J. Cracknell, Sidcup (mooring: Queenborough)
- 1989-2021 John Mackay (mooring: Dartmouth)
- c2003: Rig changed to bermudan yawl

In John Mackay’s over 30 years of ownership, CIRIS enjoyed the stage-by-stage restoration work – initially at Reading, later at Dartmouth – that a century of use demanded. This included eventually restoring her beautiful overhanging counter which had been chopped off at some point, reballasting, and re-rigging back to a yawl with all new spars by Collars and sails by SKB – these elements designed by the late Ed Burnett – and a new iroko laid deck on marine plywood.

Since 2021, in present ownership on the River Fal, Cornwall, CIRIS has been very regularly sailed, maintained and updated by an experienced classic yachtsman.

©2026 Iain McAllister/ Sandeman Yacht Company Ltd.

- Pitch pine planking on oak frame
- 2¼ x 2¼ in grown oak frames at c 2 ft centres
- 2 x 1½ x 1 inch steam bent oak timbers between
- Fastened with copper nails and roves
- Swept iroko laid deck laid over marine ply subdeck
- Iroko deck beams and carlins
- Wrough iron hanging knees
- Teak superstructures
- Other deck furniture of mixed hardwood
- External bronze chainplates

FROM AFT

AFT DECK
- 2 x Bronze mooring fairleads
- Mizzen sheet bronze padeyes & hardwood blocks
- Bronze mushroom vent
- Mizzen mast position
- Padeye backstay chainplate
- Wood mooring fairleads port & starboard
- Rudder head
- Tiller
- Flush lazarette hatches port & starboard
- Bronze mainsheet horse

COCKPIT
- Deep with high teak coamings angled for comfort
- Wide sheet winch plinths
- 2 x Lewmar 30 bronze ST sheet winches
- 4 x Lewmar 40 bronze ST sheet winches
- Teak cockpit sole grating
- 4 x deep lockers below seats
- Beta engine panel
- Shore power socket

MID DECK
- Coachroof of combined butterfly skylight and companionway hatch
- Bronze headsail tracks port & starboard
- Bronze Wilmex cars (2026)

MAST POSITION
- Lewmar 30 bronze ST main halyard winch
- Lewmar 30 bronze ST main reefing pennant winch
- Lewmar 30 ST mizzen halyard winch
- Bronze gooseneck with reef tack hooks
- Rope clutch at boom

FOREDECK
- 2 x rectangular framed deck prisms
- Bronze headsail tracks port & starboard
- Forehatch over forecabin; round portlight
- Bronze gammon iron
- Bow rollers port & starboard
- Bowsprit heel to Samson post

GROUND TACKLE
- Simpson Lawrence Hyspeed manual windlass
- Galvanised CQR anchor, chain and shackles

From the cockpit bridge through hinged double vented doors and coach roof sliding hatch one descends the removable companionway 4 x steps over the engine casing to the cabin below. The interior has a warm ambience thanks to the hardwood carpentry, contrasting with white painted elements including the deckhead, well lit by the skylight set therein, and light-coloured upholstery.

CHART TABLE TO STARBOARD
- Chart stowage under
- Clock and barometer
- Ship's electrical panel
- Stowage outboard
- Deckhead light

GALLEY TO PORT
- Stainless steel sink
- Manual bronze tap
- Gimballed Origo 3000 two-burner spirit hob
- Hinged hardwood work surface over
- Stowage outboard, below, and aft
- Semi bulkhead forward
- Deckhead light

SALOON
- Upholstered settee berths port & starboard
- Stowage under and outboard
- Forward bulkhead
- 2 x Bulkhead reading lamps

MAST POSITION

FORECABIN
- Curtained entrance
- Upholstered vee-berths
- Concealed Simpson Lawrence manual sea toilet forward
- Access in forward bulkhead to chain locker/ fo'c'sle
- Deckhead light
- 2 x Bulkhead reading lights
- Forehatch in deckhead

RIG
- Bermudan yawl rig designed by Ed Burnett
- Spruce spars by Collars (2016)
- Main mast with single ash spreaders & diamond
- Main boom
- Mizzen mast
- Mizzen boom
- Stainless steel standing rigging
- Bronze open bodied bottle screws
- Bronze bobstay adjusters
- Sailspeed roller headsail reefing
- Wood blocks

SAILS
By SKB sails made Contender 'Altair Cream' (2005)
- Racing mainsail (slab reefing)
- Working jib (roller)
- Yankee
- Staysail
- Mizzen staysail

CANVASWORK
Covers by Freeman Sails for:
- Mainsail on boom
- Mizzen on boom
- Cockpit (with strongback)
- Forehatch
- Butterfly skylight
- Overall, masts-off winter cover

MECHANICAL
- Beta BD 1005 28 hp diesel engine
- Mechanical gearbox
- Stainless steel propeller shaft
- Bronze 3-bladed propeller

ELECTRICAL
- 12 V DC electrical sytem
- Engine start engine; interior power; nav lights; instruments
- 3 x Squadron AGM 110 Ah duel deep cycling 12 V batteries
- (boxed aft of engine)
- Stirling power management system
- 12 V distributor panel
- 240 V AC Shore power
- outlets: 2 in saloon; 1 at chart table
- Battery charger
- RCD

TANKAGE
- Vetus plastic fuel tank 13 Gal/ 61 L
- Vetus plastic water tank 13 Gal/ 61 L

NAVIGATION
- Danforth steering compass
- B&G Vulcan 7 inch chartplotter

COMMUNICATIONS
- Simrad RD 68 Class D DSC VHF radio

- 200 Gals/hour submersible bilge pump with float switch
- Henderson manual bilge pump in port cockpit locker
- Various Flares and dan buoys

- Zodiac Cadet 200 tender
- Torqueedo 603 electric outboard
- Various mooring lines and warps
- Fenders