TR1 - Fiona
Owner
James Burke
Provenance
The Fiona is one of the prototypes 🔗 of the Rankin class, built by Eddie Twomey in 1956. She has remained with the Twomey family ever since and is now in the hands of Eddie’s grandson, James Burke. Eddie experimented with various sailing rigs over the years but the boat was primarily used as a family runabout for exploring the harbour, trips taking place almost every weekend throughout the summer season. The boat was kept on Kidney’s Strand adjoining the Rankin workshop and was stowed in the workshop over winter (for at least her first decade). Spars and Seagull outboard were also housed in the workshop and Eddie retained his own key for access.
Her main construction / design features are:-
- Cold moulded using 3 layers of mahogany laminate. Each layer is about 1.5mm thick. The inside and outside layers are run diagonally at 90 degrees to each other with the middle layer being horizontal.
- The Transom is made of 9mm ply mounted on a hardwood frame.
- The main thwarts have square ends that “hang” from shaped plywood brackets scribed to the side of the hull.
- The gunnels are made up of several thin layers of wood and likely to have been hand bent around the hull.
- A built-in buoyancy tank forward of the mast.
- A self supporting centreline box ( not tied in to either thwart.
- Four bottom boards either side of the hog.
- Solid side seats that ran from the stern to 600mm aft of the main thwart.
- Gunter rigged with a fixed foot on the main with the options of stepping the same rig further forward and another step and brace fixed between the rollock mounts which held a free standing spar to carry a lug sail.
- Built as a punt and converted shortly after when Eddie Twomey added the box.
