Description:

This vessel is the original YANKEE designed by Sparkman & Stephens for Irving Johnson and his wife Exy, the most famous and successful sailing couple of the last century.

Yankee is built of rust resistant Corten steel that has almost twice the tensile strength of regular steel. Her varnished sitka spruce laminated spars are stepped in tabernacles and can be lowered to rest on deck while still allowing ample head room in the center cockpit while operating in canals, all without the need for a crane. Her two 1000 lbs inline center boards Allow her to take advantage of her shallow draft while providing ample stability and improved sailing characteristics at sea. The easily handled ketch rig combined with the twin centerboards, allow many different combinations of sail area and balance which makes her very easy to sail offshore with a small crew. Yet she is a very roomy boat with berths for  8.

She is a rugged vessel. As Johnson liked to say, she was designed to climb mountains, cross oceans and survive shipwreck.

Featured in four National Geographics, numerous sailing articles and two books by the Johnson’s, Yankee is part of Yachting history with a large archive at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. With the Johnsons, she sailed extensively in the canals of Europe and the Mediterranean from Spain to Egypt where she made her historic journey up the Nile. She was sailed across the Atlantic to Trinidad in the 70’s and was used there until brought to Newport RI where she was purchased by her current owners in 1998.

The current owners have sailed her from Cape Breton Nova Scotia to Bermuda and the Caribbean and made several trips up and down the east coast to Florida and the Bahamas. This past winter her owners cruised her south to the Exumas and back.

Her current USCG COI is valid until October, 2019.