Wally Ward designs and the CA's - Southern Woodenboat Sailing

By Ian Ward

Originally named TARI, she was built by Mr Taylor at Randwick in 1944 by a friend of the Clark brothers Willie and George, who owned MALUKA & later MATHANA. Soon after launching she was purchased by Ken Patrick of Patrick Steamship Co. and renamed TERN.

Colonel Saalfeld bought her from Ken Patrick and named her JASNAR, an acronym of family members John, Alice, Sally, Nina, Aileen, and Rose. Sally Saalfeld sailed VJ's at Mosman Bay sailing club, where she met Gordon Ingate. They sailed together on JASNAR in the 1950 Sydney-Hobart race.

Gordon recounts that he pulled out the old Rugby engine just before the race, which lightened her considerably. They also sailed without lifelines and were the first boat to sail inside Tasman Island on their way into Storm Bay. Sally at age 21, was greeted warmly by the press in Hobart.

Gordon went on to race JASNAR at the SASC for many years, before the Saalfelds bought CAPRICE OF HUON. JASNAR was then sold to John Hearder a famous Sydney photographer, who kept her in Pittwater. She was then bought by Jack Parker who fitted her out in the style of his famous Parker furniture.

Jack in turn sold her to Phillip Kinsella and his brother, who skippered her in the 1971 Sydney-Hobart race, no less than 21 years after the 1950 event. Soon after that race, JASNAR was purchased by Michael and Norma Henderson, of Sydney, who sailed her out of Pittwater up and down the coast.

Michael and Norma said that they sold the boat in 1975 to a young man who knew her racing history but nothing about sailing. He did not keep her long, but the following owner took her away on some extended international passage-making, sailing JASNAR about 20,000 nautical miles across the Pacific to Vancouver and back to Sydney, largely single-handed.

In 1982 Michael and Norma were in the Pacific Northwest in their new yacht CERA in the early stages of their own eight-year world voyaging. In a quiet anchorage, and in an astonishing coincidence, they came across a young yachtswoman who told them she had crewed on JASNAR for the passage from Hawaii to Canada. They expressed their admiration for her guts and endurance, because JASNAR for such long-distance ocean-going, was a small and very wet boat."

Michael Henderson added that: "At the time, a return voyage to Vancouver from Sydney was a magnificent achievement for such a small and simple yacht. She was also quite tender and very wet in bad conditions, as Gordon Ingate implies in his CYCA interview. Norma and I can confirm this, following several slogs to windward during our trips along the coast, especially in southerlies. In my own account of sailing to Vancouver in CERA I point out that the distance traverses nearly half the world, and with a return trip is nearly as long as a circumnavigation." [8]

After JASNAR's return to Sydney she was sold again and for a long time moored in Elvina Bay, where latterly she was lived on by the late John Walker.

More recently she was purchased by Gordon Ingate who restored her and is still racing her at the SASC some 70 years later. Always perfectly balanced, she still sails better than her handicap in CYC races, Gordon is planning to remove the fixed 3 blade prop to make her even faster!