Behind tall lock gates, Fecamp has an inner basin. Within it lies a nautical legend.
Plain Barracuda now. Once Barracuda of Tarrant. Star of the nineteen eighties TV sailing soap, Howard's Way. Nemesis of Sadler Yachts. Which was bankrupted by building her and her sisters.
An Ultra Light Displacement (ULDB) flyer, designed by Tony Castro. Forty five feet and displacing just seven tonnes (Stargazer is thirty one feet and displaces four and a half). At launch, considered extreme. Not only for her innovative twin rudders and meagre weight, but also for her beam. Both its extent (of three point eight metres) and how far aft it was carried.
To contemporary eyes she looks moderate. Her girth, on the slim side for a forty five footer, carried aft to a lesser extent than is Stargazer's (a conservative 2010 German Frers cruising design).
Barracuda was forerunner to today's JPK's, and others of her fast cruising persuasion. (See En France 16 and En France 20). Jean-Pierre Kelbert himself is pictured here, commissioning a JPK 39.(Displacement five point six tonnes, beam four metres - carried all the way aft. Twin rudders too). His only problem is a three year queue of impatient would-be owners.
Barracuda was a boat launched twenty five years ahead of her time.
Stargazer is moored outside the lock gates, in the avant port. Riding out a Channel gale.
Wooded cliffs climb skyward, to take the edge off the wind.
Whilst the scrunching shingle beach, and bottleneck entrance, quell the worst of the swell. Reducing it to a residual scend, reminiscent of that in Ramsgate harbour.
Barracuda of Tarrant, racing in the 1980's courtesy of Patrick Roach (patrickroach.com).
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