Famous yacht celebrates a big birthday

by Bill Richards on 26 Nov 2008 One of Sydney’s best known yachts, Kathleen Gillett at the Australian National Maritime Museum, will be colourfully dressed in flags for a big celebratory weekend on 6-7 December.

On Sunday (7 Dec) it will be just 60 years since Kathleen came home to a hero’s welcome in Sydney Harbour, having circumnavigated the globe in a little over 17 months.

Visitors to the museum on the anniversary weekend will be able to view the sturdy 13-metre double-ended ketch on the water and inspect a photographic exhibition in the museum building that recalls this Australian maritime adventure.
Kathleen Gillett was already a well-known yacht before it set out on its world voyage.

Marine artist and sailor Jack Earl commissioned its construction in Sydney in the early 1930s, working to a design by the internationally renowned Norwegian naval architect Colin Archer. He named the boat after his wife Kathleen.
To test its seaworthiness Earl sailed Kathleen Gillett in the first Sydney-Hobart race in 1945, finishing fourth out of nine starters.

But the circumnavigation, only the second by an Australian yacht (after the schooner Sirius 1935-37), was his great dream.

With four crew members most of the way, he sailed north to Cape York, west through Torres Strait and then across the Indian Ocean to Cape Town, across the Atlantic to Panama Canal and then westward home across the Pacific Ocean to Sydney.

Phyllis Finn, crewman Mick Morris’ girlfriend, tracked the voyage and its exotic ports on a map and this is included in the exhibition Kathleen darling… Jack Earl’s voyage around the world 1947-48 (admission free) in the museum building.
Also in the exhibition are photographs of the adventure: celebrating Christmas with cake and sweet sherry at 4 am off the island of St Helena, meeting movie star Errol Flynn in Trinidad, passing through Panama Canal made fast to a tug…
Jack Earl sold Kathleen Gillett in the 1950s and after this the ketch had a colourful career that included island trading around Papua New Guinea and crocodile hunting near Bougainville.

In 1987, greatly changed from its original specifications, Kathleen Gillett was located in Guam and purchased by the Norwegian Government which funded its restoration. The Norwegian Government then presented this historic yacht to Australia as a bicentennial gift celebrating the sea links between Norway and this country.

Kathleen was vested in the Australian National Maritime Museum, and it has been on display here since the museum opened in 1991.