Golif - the first all-plastic sailing yacht?

The 23ft Golif was built from 1962 by the Jouët works at Sartrouville. Jouët claim she was the first production small offshore cruiser to be entirely built in GRP, and she caused a stir on her introduction at the first Paris Boatshow in January 1962.

The unusual name comes from a famously ruthless, daring, and reportedly amorous 17th century French pirate, Louis Adhémar Timothée Le Golif, also known as “Borgnefesse”. Since his nickname means something like "one-eyed-arse", you would probably have been wise to address him, at least until you got to know him well, as Captain Golif.

Golif was designed by Jouet with one eye on the American market, where the management believed they could sell a lot of boats. They had probably been helped considerably in their objective by the earlier successful transatlantic voyages of Jean Lacombe, in a plywood Jouet Cap-Horn. Apparently the company's market research suggested that the Americans favoured rather more interior comfort than the European market was used to, and that stiffness under sail and transportability by road would be important qualities for US buyers. Some of the Golif's characteristic features, such as its panoramic cabin window, shoal draft, relatively light displacement and high ballast ratio, stem directly from these market-related requirements.

Even today, Golif's looks seem rather quirky, though the underwater hull shape and the rig appear conventional. At the time, however, Golif's rig was considered rather tall and narrow, and the aluminium mast was in those days quite an innovation on a small cruising yacht. The odd pinched shape of the coach roof seems to have been intended to maximise the width of the side decks, but without sacrificing headroom in the places below where you might want to stand. Thus, with perfect French logic, there is low headroom over bunks and seats, where you sit or lie down, but there is plenty of headroom over the central passage and galley area, where you stand or walk. As the Jouët company said, this deck was designed from the inside!

Unusually for such a small boat, Golif had a decent chart table at which you could comfortably sit and work while facing the direction of travel, as you might in a much larger yacht. This was achieved by making the chart table swing down from the cabin deckhead right in the centre of the boat. Another innovation was a hinged and sliding hatch (visible in the colour photo of a Golif recently for sale in France)

Some versions of the Golif were delivered with an optional deeper keel for racing performance. These boats were excellent performers in offshore races and won many prizes, but it was a perfectly standard Golif that achieved the greatest fame for the class. In 1964, Jean Lacombe who had been France's sole entrant in the 1960 Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (OSTAR), returned to repeat the feat in a Golif, once again the smallest boat in the competition. This was the year of Eric Tabarly's first triumph, so Lacombe's achievement was rather overshadowed by the acclaim and fanfares garnered by the winner. Nevertheless, Lacombe's Golif took joint pride of place, alongside Tabarly's Pen Duick II at the centre of the 1965 Paris Boat show. (see photo)

There are varying estimates of the total number of Golifs built by Jouet and also by the Dubigeon yard in Normandy. The total number certainly comes to over 1000.

Jouët Golif
LOA: 6.50m
LWL: 5.92m
Beam: 2.22m
Draft: 0.96m
Displacement: 1200Kg
Ballast: 480Kg (cast iron)
Sail area: 23.2sqm

Many thanks to the French Golif owners website for all the b&w images and much of the information used in preparing this post. Colour photo of a Golif recently for sale in France from an advertisement on www.leboncoin.fr

A scanned copy of the original 1963 Jouet Golif sales brochure is available in .pdf format from Yacht Brochures.co.uk

Pen Duick II and The French Sailing Revolution

Back in the early 1960s France was still recovering from a war which had left many of its cities in ruins, its businesses broke and its economy on the rocks. To make matters worse there were deep divisions in French politics and the overthrow of the government in a military coup d'etat seemed a possibility at times.

In this climate it's not surprising that yachting was regarded as a minority activity. There were, anyway, few facilities for yachts except in places where foreign-owned boats came to visit. The idea of owning and sailing a yacht for pleasure would have seemed elitist, expensive, and impractical for the ordinary French man or woman.

If you sailed to any French harbour in the late 1950s or early '60s you would have seen no more than a handful of private yachts, most of them old and somewhat tatty. In Britain, yachting and offshore yacht racing was already booming, and British designers like Laurent Giles, Robert Clark, Peter Brett, Arthur Robb and C E Nicholson had become world famous for their robust and capable ocean racers and cruisers.

Then a Frenchman with a French boat won a famous French victory – and everything changed.

In 1964 Eric Tabarly with his remarkable ketch Pen Duick II (thanks to Remi Jouan for the above image) laid the foundations for the extraordinary boom in French yachting which has resulted, more than 40 years later, in France having a 37% share of the global market for sailing yachts, most of the world's biggest yacht building businesses, many of the world's most famous and successful yacht designers, a domestic leisure boat market of 8 million users - the second largest leisure boat market in the world after the USA - and a virtual monopoly on long-distance short-handed ocean racing superstars.

Eric Tabarly was a tough, handsome sailor, an officer in the French Navy, who was passionate about sailing and utterly determined to win the Singlehanded Transatlantic Race. Nowadays we think of “Le Transat” and other long distance races as French, but the original race in 1962 was an all-British idea, conceived by a British eccentric, Blondie Hasler, organised by the Royal Western Yacht Club, and sponsored by the Observer newspaper.

Francis Chichester had won the first race in 1960, and was favourite to win again. His yacht was a 40 foot Robert Clark ocean racer, solidly built and carrying a big cutter rig. Tabarly, an unknown in international yachting circles at the time, conceived a 44 foot purpose-built, light displacement ketch. She was built, simply but strongly in plywood with a double chined hull, and her rig was designed for power combined with good helm balance and ease of sail handling. However, no one had raced singlehanded in such a big boat before and most experts gave him little chance of finishing.

Tabarly stamped his authority on the race at an early stage. His determination to win was evident from the moment he launched an 900 sq ft spinnaker soon after the start (to the surprise of all who thought you needed a full crew for that kind of sail) and opened a huge lead over the rest of the fleet in the first couple of days.

He was handicapped by a number of gear failures. His self-steering gear jammed, forcing him to steer the boat by hand for many more hours than he had expected, his cheap alarm clock stopped working, making it difficult for him to keep to a sensible rest schedule, and his log rotor was bitten off by a dolphin. In mid-Atlantic his jib halyard block broke and he had to climb the mast to replace it. Nevertheless, Pen Duick II crossed the finishing line first in a record time of 27 days 3 hours, almost a full 3 days ahead of the pre-race favourite, Francis Chichester. Another Frenchman, Jean Lacombe finished in 9th place in his tiny GRP “Golif”. (More on this boat in a forthcoming post). (photo: Pen Duick II nears the finish line of the 1964 OSTAR: AFP/Getty Images)

France cheered the new hero. He was immediately awarded the Legion d'Honneur and returned home with Lacombe to a rapturous reception. Suddenly the French media and the French people took an unprecedented interest in yachting, new small yacht designs appeared from new French designers and new factories, money was found to build sailing schools and marinas, and France set a course towards domination of the European yachting industry.

In the next Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic race, in 1968, there were no less than 9 French entries, then 13 in 1972 and 31 in 1976. In 1984 out of the top 10 finishers, 8 were French. These days the “Transat”, as the race is now called, is dominated by French sailors, French boats, and French sponsors.

After the 1964 victory, Pen Duick had a busy and wearing life as an ocean racer taking part in many fully crewed races, during which Tabarly trained a formidable number of apprentices such as Alain Colas, Marc Pajot, Olivier de Kersauson, and others. These graduates of his informal sailing college became the next generation of great French ocean yachtsmen. Eventually Pen Duick was sold to the Ecole Nationale de la Voile at Quiberon, but after a short time, and a serious grounding, she was taken out of service and laid up ashore at the school gates. It wasn't until 1993 that a campaign to restore this famous boat was mounted, and with financial support from the government, the French Navy, the regional council of Brittany and others, she was restored to perfect condition. (colour photo above with permission of Remi Jouan)

Pen Duick II is now based at Quiberon and is used as a busy training vessel during the summer months and an occasional exhibit at the Cite de la Voile Eric Tabarly centre at Lorient in Brittany.

Pen Duick II

Designer : Gilles Costantini, Eric Tabarly

Built 1964 by Costantini at La Trinité, Brittany.

LOA : 13 m 60

LWL : 10 m

Displacement : 6.5 Tons

Beam : 3 m 40

Draft : 2 m 20

Rig : Ketch

Sail area : 60 m2

Construction : Hard chine plywood