Yarmouth sailboats: one name, two unrelated boats
There is no Yarmouth company. The name in this catalog covers two entirely separate boats that share only the place they're named for — Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight — and nothing else. The Yarmouth One Design is a small Solent racing class launched in 1911 and built by two Isle of Wight yards over the following decade. The Yarmouth 22 and Yarmouth 23 are modern GRP motor-sailers from the 1980s and 2010s, built a world away and marketed through England's Fisher motor-sailer range. Roughly eighty years separate the two, and neither descends from or continues the other.
Origins and ownership
The Yarmouth One Design traces to 1910, when the discussions that produced the class were instigated by Sir Arthur Cope, a portrait painter to the Royal Family who served as Class Captain from the class's foundation until 1935. Its home club, the Solent Yacht Club in Yarmouth, was not awarded Royal status until 1947, becoming the Royal Solent Yacht Club. Two boats left the class in its early years and two sank while racing, leaving nine survivors by the time the class's active build programme was disbanded in 1970; those nine survivors are associated with the Royal Solent Yacht Club.
The Yarmouth 22 and 23 belong to a different story entirely. Both were marketed as part of the Fisher motor-sailer range and were detailed and commissioned by the Fisher Boat Co. in southern England. Published accounts disagree on where the hulls themselves were built: Sailing Magazine credited the Yarmouth 23 to the Yarmouth Boat Company on the Isle of Wight, while a separate Sailing Magazine piece on the Yarmouth 22 states it was built in Sri Lanka by Neil Marine. The two accounts are not necessarily incompatible, but nothing in the record explains how — a buyer researching either boat's build origin should expect to find both claims in circulation.
The designers
Henry Longmore, who worked at J Samuel White's shipyard in Cowes during the First World War, designed the Yarmouth One Design. Two yards built the class from his design: Theo Smith of Yarmouth built 11 of the 13 launched, just before and after the war, and Woodnutts of St. Helens built the remaining two in the 1920s.
The Yarmouth 22 and 23 came from Gordon Wyatt and David Freeman, the same pairing best known for the classic Fisher motor-sailer range. Freeman, credited specifically as the Yarmouth 22's co-designer, envisaged a frill-free cruiser aimed at sailors moving up from keelboats such as the XOD. Roger Barrow, president of Fisher, described the boat's companionway as keeping the design "simple, with a more modern, sleek minimalist appearance, while retaining the seakeeping benefits of a traditional long keeler."
Construction through the eras
The One Design's construction story is simply its two builders: Theo Smith turned out most of the fleet around the First World War, and Woodnutts finished the run in the 1920s — two yards building to one design, not a change of design itself.
The motor-sailer hulls are heavy-duty, hand-laid GRP mouldings with simulated clinker topsides over a traditional long-keel form, and decks laid in hand-laid Sri Lankan teak. Where the One Design's era favored a flat-topped coachroof and round brass portholes, the Yarmouth 22 trades that look for a curvy, low-profile superstructure with a blister companionway in place of a sliding hatch. Construction changed within the motor-sailer run, too: earlier boats had decks cored with plywood only where fittings sat and foam elsewhere, while later boats used plywood throughout the deck, letting an owner reposition or add fittings without hunting for solid backing underneath.
Lines and generations
The Yarmouth 22 shares its hull with the Yarmouth 23 but differs in the details: lower topsides, a keel 15cm deeper, a modified coachroof, a fractional alloy rig, and a simpler fit-out. The 22 itself comes in two sub-variants built to different EU Recreational Craft Directive categories — the Classic, with an inboard diesel, marked Category B offshore for four persons, and the Sprite, fitted for an outboard on a transom mount, marked Category C for four persons.
Who Yarmouth is for
A buyer drawn to the One Design is really buying into a small, well-documented one-design class: an identified designer, two identified builders, and a surviving fleet tied to a specific club. Its rules kept it that way — even the class's own regulations specified that a boat's one paid hand could not touch the tiller during a race. A buyer looking at a Yarmouth 22 or 23 is choosing a traditional-profile motor-sailer built in one of two clearly differentiated variants and CE categories, with the caveat that its own build origin is a question the model name alone won't settle.
