S&S 48: One man's boat

Sydney lawyer Brian Folbigg saw the first production Nautor Swan 48 yacht at the London Boat Show in 1977 and immediately fell in love.

He considered placing an order for one of the Sparkman and Stephens designed sloops but the daunting import duties that then applied to boats brought into Australia made him think twice.

In the late 1970s there were very few mass production yachts built anywhere in the world, so Folbigg's thoughts of a large ocean cruiser/racer kept coming back to the beautiful Swan. In 1979 he visited New York and met with Olin Stephens of Sparkman & Stephens and discussed building the Swan 48 design in Australia.

Stephens was agreeable and after some minor modifications to the interior and stretching the overall length by two feet, Folbigg arrived back in Sydney with the plans for his new boat.

He selected Dolls Point boat builder Cec Quilkey, who had a remarkable reputation after turning out such famous boats as Love & War, Salacia and the original Ragamuffin, for the project.

The boat was built of three skins of diagonally-laid, cold-moulded Oregon laid over spotted gum laminated frames. Every frame was individually laminated to suit its position in the structure and some are made up of 37 layers of timber. To hold the yacht together, a stainless-steel rolled-steel joist was placed through the base of the hull. This RSJ formed the mast step and also held the lead keel through a series of keelbolts.

The finished hull was Dynal sheathed and finished with two-pot polyurethane enamel.

Unusually for her day, the yacht was also fitted with a stainless steel centreboard which could be raised and lowered from the deck. With the board up the yacht drew only six feet and could get across river bars and into tropical lagoons but with the board down she drew almost nine feet for offshore sailing.

Such was the detailed work put into the construction that the yacht was not finished and launched until 1982. Christened Centrefold for her amidships folding centreboard, Folbigg started sailing her seriously out of the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. Over the next couple of decades Centrefold competed in four Sydney Hobart Races, 14 Lord Howe Island races, three Sydney-Noumea races, and a number of Sydney-Gold Coast, Sydney-Brisbane and Brisbane-Gladstone races.

Now aged 73 and fitted with two new knees, Folbigg has reluctantly put Centrefold on the market. 

"I’ve maintained and upgraded Centrefold over the years and I have kept her right up to scratch," Folbigg told BoatPoint, "Over the past 30 years I think most things mechanical have been replaced. There are up-to-date electronics, a new engine and feathering prop and the interior teak timber is perfect.”

Since moving more to cruising than racing, Folbigg has fitted the interior of Centrefold with all the necessary luxuries needed to keep his wife, family and friends happy and well fed and watered on extended passages through the Great Barrier Reef.

There are electric winches to do the hard work of raising and sheeting the sails, an electric windlass for the anchor and a bow thruster to make docking easy. LED lighting is fitted throughout to lower battery drain but there is also a 3.5 kVA generator fitted to keep everything topped up and the freezer cold.

Sleeping accommodation can fit eight but limit the load to two couples and each can effectively have a stateroom at either end of the yacht with their own separate bathrooms, complete with hot and cold pressure showers.

The galley is fitted with a stainless steel sink, microwave, two day fridges. A freezer and ice maker, and a two-burner gas cook top and oven. The main saloon table has seating for eight.

DETAILS:
Make: Sparkman & Stephens custom sloop
Price: $275,000.00
Builder: Quilkey Bros. Sydney, 1982
Length: 50 feet;
Draft: six feet (board up), 8.8ft (board down)
Berths: Eight.
Heads: Two.
Engine: 75hp Detroit diesel.
Generator: Onan 3.5 KvA.
Water: 700 litres.
BoatPoint reference: SSE-AD-956718