Around 4,700 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, in the English city of Gloucester, a team of ship builders are painstakingly bringing a Caymanian sailing boat back to its former glory.
The Fair Weather isn’t your average yacht, this 72-foot wooden schooner – built 75 years ago – has an extraordinary history that a team of Cayman Island residents are fighting to keep alive.
Led by Paul Deegan and Chris Rowland, they have raised almost $2 million so far and aim to raise another $1 million to restore the ship so it can be sailed home to the Cayman Islands. Once here, it will be used as a floating classroom, teaching school children about the islands’ rich maritime past, while also serving as a charter boat available for private hire.
Fair Weather’s colourful history
Fair Weather was built in Jamaica between in 1947 and 1950 by renowned Caymanian ship builder, Arnold ‘Cappy’ Foster, who had just founded Cayman Boats Ltd with Sir Anthony Jenkinson and Lester Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s brother.
The boat would probably have been built in the Cayman Islands had National Bulk Carriers not arrived on the territory in 1947 and recruited most of the islands’ mariners, leaving the shipbuilding yards without labourers.
Sir Anthony and Hemingway sailed around the Caribbean together during World War II looking for German positions, says Deegan, and their reporting officer in the Admiralty was soon-to-be James Bond author Ian Fleming.
“Sir Anthony remained very good friends with Fleming, and Fleming gave him, Foster, and Hemingway the rights to use the Royal Navy boatyard in Jamaica,” he says. “So they towed several boats over to Jamaica from Cayman Brac and finished them off, while also building new boats, including Fair Weather.”
Fair Weather was launched in 1950 and sailed to George Town. For the next few years, Sir Anthony used the boat as a private yacht, with Hollywood royalty such as Errol Flynn among her passengers. She even turned up in a few films during that time, including Road to Bali in 1952 starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.
Sir Anthony later decided to rent Fair Weather out as a fishing boat, gutting out her interiors. She was used for fishing trips around the Caribbean until the rental agreement expired, and Sir Anthony converted her back to a private yacht.
The boat was then sold to a Californian couple called Suttie and Bill Adams in the late 50s.
“Suttie and Bill decided it would be a great idea to take a 72-foot-long sail boat and sail around the world with their kids despite the family having zero experience of sailing,” says Deegan, who originally hails from Ireland, but has lived on the Cayman Islands for the past two decades.
“Unfortunately, their marriage didn’t last the first crossing of the Pacific, but Suttie continued and ended up being the first female captain to circumnavigate the globe … all on the Fair Weather,” says Deegan. “The boat visited over 100 ports in four years. There’s a book about it called the ‘Cruise of the Fair Weather.’”
Suttie eventually sold the boat and for several years she was used as a charter yacht in the Pacific, “hopping from Honolulu to Tahiti to Fiji to the Marshall Islands,” says Deegan.
Then it was sold again, this time to an English man who sailed it to Majorca in 1980
His plan was to use her as a Mediterranean sailing charter, but the business wasn’t a success and the boat fell into disrepair.
Fast forward to 1999, and a former Spanish naval officer called Luis Perez Solerno Puig found her and decided to fully restore the boat. He and his family then spent many happy years sailing Fair Weather around the Mediterranean, but as his children married and had their own kids, the boat got less use, so Puig put it into a sailing charter business to cover the costs of maintaining it.
Connecting with the past
During the pandemic, Deegan was surfing the net when he came across the boat and discovered it came from the Cayman Islands. Delving into its history, he read about Sir Anthony Jenkins and wondered whether any of his family was still in the islands.
“I pulled up the telephone directory and started calling all the Jenkinsons listed here,” he recalls. “There were about 10 or 12 of them, but I got to about number three, and the guy goes, ‘No, I don’t know Sir Anthony Jenkinson, but I do know his son John. Would you like his telephone number? So I called the number. A lady answers and I just said, ‘Listen, I know this is going to sound dodgy, but I’m trying to track down Sir John Jenkinson, whose dad owned Fair Weather. And that was his wife, Louise. And she said, ‘Oh, absolutely. Would you like to come around for tea?’ And I was there in about 10 minutes.”
“It turned out John was very passionate about Fair Weather (he’d actually lived on the boat as a baby) and he and a consortium of well-established Caymanian families and businessmen had got the idea to save her and bring her back.”
When Deegan showed an interest in doing the same, the group, who are mostly in their 70s and 80s, were happy to pass the mantle on.
“They said, ‘We’re getting on and you’re a young buck, you go for it. We’re here if you need us.’ Well, I’m in my 50s, so not that young! But it made sense for me to take it on, so I did.”
The journey begins to bring Fair Weather back home
In 2022, Paul joined forces with Rowland and founded the Fair Weather Foundation, which received its not-for-profit organisation status the following year.
Not only did they plan to return her to the Cayman Islands, the pair wanted the vessel to be part of the community.
They hope to invite 2,300 school pupils on board during the first year, from both public and private schools.
‘We think it’s a fantastic opportunity for children to learn about Cayman Islands’ rich seafaring and shipbuilding history, which most of them don’t learn about at school,” Deegan says. “We’re targeting children aged nine to 13 as that tends to be when they’re most responsive to this kind of education.”
To fund the learning projects, they plan to charter the boat when it’s not being used by school groups.
The $3 million renovation
Although Puig renovated Fair Weather in 1999, two decades of sailing had left its mark on the vessel and it needed another full refurb.
As the facilities and shipbuilders to carry out such work aren’t available on the Cayman Islands, it was decided the boat would be renovated at a shipyard specialising in traditional shipbuilding in the U.K.
In January 2022, the vessel was hauled onto a special trailer and transported from La Manga in Spain all the way to T. Nielsen & Company’s shipyard in Gloucester in the Cotswolds.
Transforming a boat such as Fair Weather doesn’t come cheap, however, with the bill now sitting at a hefty $3 million.
But the cost does include replacing the main structure of the boat plank by plank, a time-consuming process but one that will ensure the yacht has another 30 years of sailing at least, says Deegan.
“Most of the interior of the boat is staying, however – like the decking and the masts for example,” he says. “So we’re not losing the history there. It would have been cheaper to build a replica – but I think preserving the original is important.”
So far, the foundation has relied on corporate and individual donations and sponsorships, which have covered a little more than half of the work. One anonymous donor made it possible for four young Caymanian men to travel to Gloucester in November 2023 and spend five months working on the boat as shipbuilding apprentices. They all have the chance to apply for jobs working with the foundation once the boat arrives home.
Among the latest Caymanian businesses to support the project is Tortuga Rum Company. The firm has launched a special edition ship-shaped bottle created as a tribute to Cayman’s seafaring legacy and will donate $1 from each sale to the refurb.
The foundation is now waiting on government funding, which it says is crucial to help get the work over the finish line by the end of the year.
“Our plan was to have her back on the Cayman Islands in 2025, which is her 75th birthday, hopefully for Pirates Week in November.
“We still need people’s help though, so urge anyone to donate. Even if it’s just to buy a plank of the boat, which you can have your family name engraved on and be a part of history.”
For more information on Fair Weather and how you can support the project, visit Fair Weather Foundation.
