CLASSIC SIX METRE NEWSLETTER

15. D 22 Clarity (W&R Fife, 1924), by Bill Doyle (U.S.A.)
Jed Pearsall should be listed as the owner of Clarity. I am his partner / co-owner. He also
owns the NY-30, Amorita, that was run-down by Sumurun last summer.
Jed purchased her in Maine roughly 30 years
ago and ,along with his father, restored her to
beautiful condition, preserving nearly all of
her original fabric. (His father was a famed
furniture designer, who restored the Fife
Halloween back to life in the early 1990's.)
Clarity was Jed's first classic sailboat, which
led to many more restoration and
preservation projects.
Under her original name was Bonzo, she won
a silver medal in the 1924 Olympics. She
was re-named Clarity in the early 80's
because of the pejorative association of the
name Bonzo with an American clown
character "Bozo" that denotes someone who
is clueless, ignorant, or reckless.
After the Olympics, she competed in the States briefly among the 6's and then was sold off as
a pleasure boat and given a modest cabin in the early1930's which she has kept ever since.
She was sailed many years in Maine and eventually sold. While she has had constant work
completed on her, she has never gone through a top to bottom, full frame by frame,
restoration. Instead she has been well maintained throughout her life and has received great
deal of care to keep her launched and race ready, season after season. She has nearly all her
original planking, frames, etc.
This coming season, as with the past decade or so, she will be moored at her home port of
Newport, RI, and will be competing in both the local classic events, as well as several
Performance Handicap Racing Fleet (PHRF) races, where she out-points nearly every modern
competitor she comes up against.
She is currently maintained by MPG in Mystic Connecticut, where she is stored indoors in the
off-season. As Mystic is about 30 n.m. distance from Newport, she makes her twice annual
off-shore cruise for delivery and de-commissioning.
While she may not be at the top of the Classic 6 fleet for next year’s Worlds, she seems to be
an excellent heavy weather boat, deep and narrow as Fife liked to design them, and she will
be competing as a happy participant none-the-less.
In 2008, Clarity will be joined by fellow classic 6's for the first time in decades. We’ll see
how she goes.
- 31-