by Bruce Stannard
KRAIG CARLSTROM
After her restoration, the immaculate gaff cutter MERLIN, at 85 years old, sails on a cloudless autumn morning on Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne, Australia.
Like seductive sirens, certain beautiful vessels invariably attract the roving eye of a sailor. Through their sensuous sheerlines, the balanced symmetry in their curving bows and counter sterns, and the elegant proportions of their rigs, they sing the kind of alluring songs that cause old salts to glow in remembrance of times long past, when youth overwhelmed cold common sense and we surrendered to their irresistible charms. MERLIN, a lovely little teak-built British cutter, is just such a yacht. At the Australian Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, Tasmania, more than 500 gleaming boats and launches lay before me under a cloud of dazzling, multicolored bunting, and yet MERLIN was the one whose siren call most enchanted me.