PHILIP L. RHODES DESIGN NO. 399 LAUNCHED 23 MAY 1936
New York stockbroker Robert P. Baruch can’t have enjoyed being second last over the finish line in the 1934 Bermuda race, his 56 ft William Hand-designed schooner ZINGARA arriving two days behind the leading boats. Baruch, however – a very able small boat racing helmsman – had time on his side; he was only 25.
By the 1936 Bermuda race he’d become a partner in his family’s Wall Street brokerage house, H. Hentz & Co., was now married, and had only just taken delivery of this very fine yacht with all the potency to do much, much better. KIRAWAN was untried – launched only a month before the Bermuda Race start – though her designer Philip Rhodes well knew what she was capable of. But surely only in his wildest dreams could he have imagined beating Olin Stephens’s STORMY WEATHER boat for boat in a 635-mile slog to windward with gusts of up to 45 knots – and winning the race overall.
The two years from 1934 to 1936 had also been happy ones for Rhodes, finding post-Great Depression stability working with Cox & King, yet with a free hand to develop his own portfolio. KIRAWAN’s Bermuda Race win brought international recognition for Rhodes, and at 41 took his career to another level. KIRAWAN’s renown was also assured, and her doghouse/ hard dodger became much copied, in particular by Sparkman & Stephens.
But what then became of this first KIRAWAN? Pre-World War II is less known because she mostly cruised, renamed SILVANA. Reports vary, but at some late 1940s to early 1950s point she arrived on the West Coast and reverted to her original name. An early owner there is believed to have been Hollywood actress Terry Moore whose long-term relationship with Howard Hughes became the stuff of legend.
KIRAWAN spent at least four decades sailing the Pacific, mostly out of Marina del Rey, competing in the Transpac twice in the mid-1950s and the 1964 Los Angeles – Tahiti Race. In the ownership of film producer Sandy Horowitz from c.1993, she enjoyed a major refit and was trucked back east to Newport, Rhode Island, for the 2000 Bermuda Race, which she finished but revealed further issues to be addressed. A subsequent restoration attempt failed and KIRAWAN ended up in a very bad state until purchased by her present owner and savior in 2017.
Completing her major restoration at Joe Loughborough’s Portsmouth, Rhode Island, LMI yard, in the midst of the pandemic, undoubtedly slowed the rejuvenated KIRAWAN’s re-exposure to the classic yachting world, but she remains a beautiful, practical and potent classic cruiser racer, doing exactly what she did straight out of the box in 1936.
TIMELINE – 1936 23 May – launch
- 1936 June – Newport to Bermuda Race (Winner)
- 1937 June – New London to Gibson Island Race
- 1949? To West Coast USA
- 19?? Terry Moore (Hollywood actress)
- 1950s C.P. “Boo” Paschall
- 1955 Participated in the Transpac Race
- 1957 Participated in the Transpac Race
- 1960s Grant Hoag
- 1964 Los Angeles to Tahiti Race – 3rd to RASCAL and TICONDEROGA
- 1960s Tony Dow – Actor known for playing Wally in ‘Leave it to Beaver’
- Early 1970s Hy Jaspol, Marina del Rey – 5 years of refits
- c.1975 Harry Cohen, Marina del Rey
- 1993 Sandy Horowitz (film producer)
- 2000 Newport to Bermuda Race
- 2000 Participated in Operation Sail 2000, Newport, RI
- 2022 Newport to Bermuda Race
- 2023 Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race
- 2024 Newport to Bermuda Race (5th in class, 24th overall)
