Brooklin Boat Yard Sparkman & Stephens 56 Sloop

Introducing the stunning 2007 Brooklin Boat Yard Sparkman & Stephens 56 Sloop, a remarkable vessel that embodies elegance and performance. With an overall length of 56 feet, this sloop boasts a beautifully crafted wooden hull featuring a modified vee shape and a fin keel, ensuring stability and agility on the water. Powered by a reliable Yanmar 4JH4-TE inboard diesel engine, delivering 75 horsepower, this boat is equipped for both leisurely cruising and spirited sailing adventures. With only 1300 hours of use, it promises dependable performance for years to come. Designed for comfort, the ANNA can accommodate up to 8 guests, making it perfect for gatherings and memorable outings. This sloop is a true gem for sailing enthusiasts, combining classic design with modern functionality, ensuring every journey is an unforgettable experience on the open seas.

This is an opportunity to acquire a yacht of exceptional quality, comfort, pedigree and performance. ANNA is a 56-foot Sparkman & Stephens racer/cruiser that was completed in 2007 by one of the very best builders in the business, wooden-boat specialist Brooklin Boat Yard in Maine. ANNA has been homeported in these colder waters throughout her existence, sailing in recent years out of Camden Harbor on Penobscot Bay. To date, ANNA has had one owner. The man who commissioned her, who worked closely with Olin Stephens and Brooklin Boat Yard throughout the build, and who has cruised and campaigned ANNA for 16 seasons, has decided 64with regret to sell her because of health problems and the press of business.

ANNA was the final design to come from Olin Stephens drawing board, yet she was patterned after one of his earliest sailing yachts, the renowned Stormy Weather, launched in New York in May 1934. Stormy Weather won the 1935 Transatlantic Race from Newport, Rhode Island, to Bergen, Norway (by way of Sable Island, Greenland and Iceland), in 19 days. This was a grueling test of design, construction, seamanship and resolve, and no fluke, either, for Stormy Weather went on sweep that year Fastnet Race also. By 1954, her 20th anniversary, Stormy Weather had earned 12 overall wins, 15 class wins and five third-place finishes in 31 major ocean races, making her the most significant racing yacht of the 20th Century. Fifty years later, ANNA was commissioned to be a worthy inheritor of those genes, one that combined advancements in sailing-yacht design with the look and feel of a classic.

At her launching, in June 2007, Sparkman & Stephens President and Chief Naval Architect Greg Matzat said, 3With some notable exceptions, ANNA is a scaled-up version of Stormy Weather. We ve maintained most of the aesthetic elements of the older boat her sheerline, her tumblehome, the shape of her house, the configuration of her cockpit, her overhangs and transom and placed them on a modern, efficient underbody.

ANNA hull is built of a cold-molded combination of mahogany, western red cedar and Port Orford cedar fastened with West System epoxy for traditional wooden-boat character but less weight. While Stormy Weather was a yawl, ANNA owner wanted a fractional sloop rig like the high-performance Star boats he d learned to race as a boy. Other, more subtle modernizations abound: Underneath, ANNA has a bulbed fin keel with a spade rudder. Her rudder, mast and boom are carbon-fiber. Her hidden anchor is suspended from an arm that retracts into the foredeck. So that she could easily be crewed by a couple, ANNA s sail-handling, maneuvering and anchoring systems were designed for simplicity and efficiency as well as reliability. The scaled-up hull provides maximum headroom while keeping the freeboard relatively low. With input from the owner and from Martha Coolidge Design, Sparkman & Stephens also updated the yacht interior. The galley, for instance, was moved aft for easier access from the cockpit and better socializing. There are deluxe accommodations for two couples plus pilot and transom bunks to port and starboard, for a total of eight berths. Extra care was taken with ANNA throughout. Before work began on the interior, for example, the owner had the yard build a full-size model of her out of particle board as a walk-though mockup, so no adjustments would have to be made afterward. As a result, when she was launched, ANNA was the most finished boat ever.

ANNA commemorates the owner mother, a lady who lived to the age of 96. The owner: 3In 2004 we sold our family business and I began to work on ANNA. I already had a relationship with Olin Stephens and with Mitch Neff, Brooklin Boat Yard president, and the three of us, along with Greg Matzat, set out to create a special boat that had the same lines as Stormy Weather but wasn t a sister ship. Olin was then living in Hanover, New Hampshire, which was only half an hour from my place on Lake Sunapee. When I first walked into his apartment, I was amazed at the computer equipment he had and his expertise at running it. He was extremely helpful in getting me the performance that I was looking for in ANNA. Even though he was then in his 90s, he was still very vibrant and we made several trips together to Maine while ANNA was being built. When ANNA was launched, in 2007, we didn t have a lot of time to sail her before the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. I quickly put together a scratch crew of nice young sailors and we entered the race. There were about 100 wooden boats in all, including a handful of 76s, also built by Steve White and his team at Brooklin Boat Yard. Long story short, we easily outpointed the 76s, and everybody else too, and won that race outright, on uncorrected time and by a very large margin. We had ANNA in Newport once, alongside Sonny, another famous Sparkman & Stephens best of the best ocean racers. She was patterned after Stormy Weather too, but rigged, like us, as a very tall sloop. I invited her to come out and race, but her captain declined, saying Never bring a knife to a gunfight! ANNA proved to be exceptionally fast and easy to handle as well as comfortable. I ve single-handed her many times in some very foul weather and she s always performed incredibly well. To this day, when I see her, I often think of something Olin used to say, that the easiest boats to look at seem to be the easiest to drive. We ve sailed ANNA all over the Northeast from Rhode Island up to Nova Scotia. We never tire of the wonderful Maine coast, though, and finding new islands to explore. It will be hard to give her up.