my work

Design 126 Zeearend

There are numerous stories about this famous yacht. She was built by De Vries of Amsterdam and launched in 1936. Heres how it came to be. The boat was commissioned by Claes Bruynzeel of Holland. Many will know him and his company as a supplier of Marine plywood, which is still in operation today.

Rod Stephens had been campaigning Stormy Weather in Europe and just won the Fastnet Race of 1935. He was in Amsterdam with Stormy Weather and was headed south the following day. Mr. Bruynzeel noticed he would have to traverse the North Sea Channel and as Stormy Weather had no engine at the time (Rod had removed it for the Fastnet Race as superfluous weight!), Mr. Bruynzeel offered Rod a tow, using his own large ketch. In any event the next day Mr. Bruynzeel found Rod already departed and he watched him tacking out the channel. Rod estimated he made about 150 tacks to clear the channel. As a result Mr. Bruynzeel never caught up to Stormy Weather. He ordered a new design the following day over lunch with Rod.

Here are the plans.


I apologize that the general arrangement is a poor copy. We pulled this off of a microfiche file we had on hand.


Heres another good story. The original Zeearend ended up wasting away tied to a barge in some backwater down in Maryland. The boat sat for months and months completely ignored. So one day a yard worker decided to go onboard, have a look and make sure she was okay. Apparently the main companionway ladder had been removed and put into storage. The yard man jumped down from the cockpit and went right through the cabin sole and right on through the bottom of the boat! The boat sank on the spot pulling the adjacent barge to which she was tied right down with her. All of the hardware was salvaged and that was the end of the original Zeearend.

Anyway, about 20 years ago the descendants of the Bruynzeel family contacted us and discussed building an exact copy of their fathers boat. I told them that as their father had already paid for the design there would be no royalty charge, which is our normal practice when an existing design is used for new construction. I also mentioned what I knew about the original hardware sitting at yard such-and-such and what had happened to the original boat. My understanding is they were able to purchase the original hardware, binnacle, and so forth and that this is all installed on the new boat.

Heres an image of the new boat at a stage of partial construction. I have included it as the deckhouse/cockpit geometry in very interesting.


By the way, the name means sea eagle in Dutch.