THE LADY WITH THE CARVED DRAGON

In the 1990s, during a walk along the jetties of a marina in Kusadasi, Turkey, a man called Rahmi M Koç stopped to observe an old wooden cutter that bore the name Breiz Atao on the stern. The expression means “Brittany forever” in Breton, and in the state she was in, there was no worse way to honour the grandeur of this region of north-western France. The boat was scarred by neglect, mutilated of bowsprit and denaturalised in rig, which at that time was bermudan. Nonetheless, the Turkish gentleman, a tycoon at the helm of the country’s pre-eminent industrial and services group, clearly felt he was standing before a boat of rare pedigree.

The condition of the yacht was simply pitiful. From a brief inspection, it was clear that the hull had not undergone any kind of cleaning or maintenance for years. Bewitched by the boat’s potential, the mogul collected information on the mysterious and eventually managed to track down her owner. During the early research, as usual entrusted to a number of collaborators, his initial feelings turned out to be correct: the boat, which for decades had been called , was nothing less than a project by the great William Fife III. The yacht had been built to the second 12-Metre International Rule as a gaff cutter and launched in.