Int. 8-Meter Starling Burgess

At the shores of Lake Constance in Germany you will find Martin Yachts, which to my mind ranks with the world’s best boatyards. Sepp Martin sets the standard for quality and precision, a standard rarely matched by others. The latest yacht to be launched is the Int. 8-Metre Starling Burgess. A 1937 design which had not been built previously. She was built for a repeat client of the yard who wanted a new 8-Metre to an old original pre-1940 design.

Juliane Hempel lofted the boat and that is a mindboggling story in itself: You see, she didn’t just loft the boat, she lofted each individual plank and frame, right down to the bevel and, the nightmare of lofting the holes that needed to be drilled for the rivets in the planks and the frames ! That included the steel frames and the wooden frames (she’s composite to Lloyd’s 1937 Rules) as well as the hollow on the inside of the planks to follow the curve of the frames. Believe it or not, the bevel of the frames matched the planks, the holes in the planks matched the holes in the frames, the boat is symmetrical within a +/- 1,5mm margin, the planks fitted as if grown together. When she was launched she was so tight that the dust in the bilge stayed dry.

An amazing beauty for which Touchwood supplied selected Sitka spruce for deckbeams, carlings and quarter sawn Douglas fir for the deck. Of course the racings spars are also built in Sitka spruce.