Mariquita Book - mk2.5

“Soon I shall hear the creaking of the halyard blocks again and be looking at the top-sail
straining the new jackyarder toward the gaff. How will it come? Is she too high or too low?
Lord! She will be all right when the main sheet is in and the great main-sail full of wind. A great
sport, Sir, a great sport!
So, as Sir Francis Drake said ‘Let the gentleman haul with the men.’ The hook’s off the ground.
‘Fill her, sir, fill her.’ We are under way for another racing season.”
Extract from The Complete Yachtsman by Brooke Heckstall-Smith, published Methuen (1912)
Under the ownership of Peter Livanos and Ernst Klaus, captained by Jim Thom, she set sail once again
and quickly became one of the stars of the classic circuit. Over the next nine seasons Mariquita turned
heads wherever she was campaigned. The Mariquita Project was one of the most professional and wellresourced
classic yacht programmes ever undertaken. Her owners sent her to compete across Europe:
on the Clyde, Cowes, Falmouth and countless Mediterranean regattas. This was classic yachting pushed
to a never-seen-before level. In 2011 she celebrated her centenary by winning the Voiles de Saint-
Tropez. However, in 2012 she was unexpectedly offered for sale and bought by a syndicate headed up by
yachtsman John Caulcutt, and so begun the period of Mariquita’s story covered in this book.
Mariquita Fife Regatta 2008
Mariquita Westward Cup 2010 Mariquita Crew in Antibes Centenary Year 2011
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