Kriter is a 20.27m long sailing boat, ketch rigged, built in 1973 for competing in the first edition of the Whitbread Round the World Race, where she arrived third in real time and fourth in corrected time. She is named after the French champagne company Kriter.
History edit
Kriter was designed by the French architect George Auzépy-Brenneur after the inquiry of Jack Grout (sailor). She was built in the Nautic-Saintonge shipyard in Saujone, France, to compete in the 1973 Whitbread Round the World Race, renamed Volvo Ocean Race in 2001 and in 2019 becoming The Ocean Race.
She was launched in Royan on June 2nd, 1973, with only little time left before the start of the race in Portsmouth, England, in September 1973.
The Whitbread Race edit
At the beginning of the construction, Kriter was actually supposed to be named Leopard Normand III. But when the call came out for the first Whitbread Round the World Race, Jack Grout decided that he was going to take part, making some modifications to the original blue-prints. This, however, also meant an increase of costs, not only for the construction of the boat but also for the race itself. So Grout went to the Kriter champagne company proposing his project. Excited by the idea, the Kriter company agreed to fully sponsor the enterprise.
Four different crews were planned to navigate Kriter through the four legs of the race, among the crew members the soon-to-be-famous Gilles Vaton, Michel Malinovsky and Alain Gliksman.
The competing fleet of 19 boats was quite different from today's high-tech racers, extremely sophisticated for high performance but poorly equipped in the interior. The first 19 Whitbread yachts were fully equipped with cruising facilities like galley, bunks, heads and other comforts. 17 of them were two-masted (ketches, yawls and one schooner) and the remaining two were sloops. They raced under the then new IOR (International Offshore Rules).
It was a very tough race with plenty of damages: dismastings, injuries and unfortunately even three fatalities. Kriter finished with only minor damages and was the first French boat to sail around Cape Horn in a race. She was also supposedly the first yacht that was used for promotion by her sponsor. More than 40'000 celebratory bottles of Kriter champagne with a spectacular picture of Kriter roaring downwind around Cape Horn were especially produced after the race.
All crew members stated that Kriter performed beautifully, she was strong, fast and safe.
After the Race edit
After her performance in the Whitbread, Kriter was refit and refurbished to make her a comfortable pleasure boat for cruising. She was sailed by her patron André Boisseaux in the Mediterranean Sea and eventually sold, continuing sailing in the Mediterranean and West Indies including several transatlantic crossings. She was then sold to an American lawyer who took care of and used her as his private yacht until the early eighties. At this point her story becomes a bit "smokey". Somehow she was hauled out in a shipyard in Newport (RI), the lawyer passed away and Kriter got abandoned and forgotten for 17 years. Water and weather left profound wounds, polyester skin and the six layers of laminated mahogany hull were penetrated by water, but her body remained largely intact. In 2000 she was found and bought by a Frenchman who started phase one of her refitting story in Charleston (SC). She was sold again in 2004, brought back to Europe on a cargo ship and hauled out in Cagliari (Sardinia) where phase two of her restoration started.
After almost five years of restoring works between United States and Sardinia, she's sailing again in the Mediterranean since 2007.
