The restoration of an iconic racer, one that was so ground-breaking it helped create a whole genre of yachts, is no small undertaking. But that’s exactly what inadvertent owner Tina Roberts ploughed into headfirst with the two-year refit of Ragtime, the original ultra-light displacement boat from the land of the long white cloud.

Designed and built single-handedly by New Zealander John Spencer for industrialist and racing driver Sir Tom Clark in 1963/64, Ragtime was launched as Infidel and was reputedly the largest hard chine plywood keelboat in the world.

Infidel immediately upset the racing establishment, beating the Tercel brothers’ 60-footer Ranger, which had won nearly every race it sailed over three decades.

So comprehensive were Infidel’s victories that it was reportedly banned from competing in regattas in New Zealand. It was also barred from entering the 1967 Sydney-Hobart Race because it was deemed too light and not seaworthy enough for the notoriously treacherous 630-mile race.

California dreaming

With nowhere to turn Infidel wound up where many wayward souls are welcomed: California. A pair of businessmen in Newport Beach purchased the yacht for $25,000 in 1969 and renamed it Ragtime.

The yacht changed owners again in 1971 and, 10 years after her launch, benchmarked the performance of the ultra-light displacement genre by defeating the 73-footer Windward Passage in the epic 1973 Transpac Race, winning the Barn Door Trophy for first-to-finish by a mere 4m 31s over the 2,225-mile course. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, that’s an interesting boat. That’s cool,’” recalls California yacht designer Alan Andrews of his first sighting of Ragtime in the early 1970s.

“Ragtime was a big boat, most of the racing at the time was in 30- to 40-footers. She was clearly very fast, at least downwind, with the hard chines as well.”

Ragtime is a simple but eye-catching yacht design, with a sheerline that drops noticeably from bow to stern. The hull is constructed from marine plywood; the cabin house, which stands tall of the sheerline, of kauri wood, and when launched it displaced 10 tons. The original LOA of 61ft 8in was determined in large part because that was the amount of floor space in Spencer’s shop, yet still the bow and stern hung outside the sliding doors on either end of the shed.

The boat hull features hard chines running the waterline length of 50ft 8in. In its original form Ragtime lacked an engine and was tiller steered, two features that were changed after she reached American shores.

Article continues below…

A reluctant refit

Since arriving in the US, Ragtime has had no fewer than 10 owners (individuals, syndicates and universities). Tina Roberts became the current owner in 2021, upon the passing of her partner Chris Welsh who was actually Ragtime’s longest owner.

Welsh was part of a group that bought the yacht at auction for $125,000 in 2003 before becoming sole owner two years later. Welsh and Roberts met in 2009, as kindred spirits and adrenaline junkies. When Welsh passed unexpectedly in March 2021, aged 58, he left Ragtime to Roberts.

Welsh had accumulated parts that he intended to use in a refit of Ragtime. He purchased a spare TP52 offshore mast in Europe and had it shipped to California. He found a marinised Smart car engine in Germany and also shipped it home.

Welsh intended to lighten Ragtime and make her easier to sail in his planned refit, but Roberts had great apprehension about undertaking the project on her own. “My first thought shortly after he passed away was: this is not my project.

This was his project, and I don’t know what to do,” says the 54-year-old Roberts. “I had some really good friends who said I should sell the boat, get rid of it, sell the pieces and parts and move on. And I thought that was probably a good idea, but i wanted to wait and find out where life landed.”

Roberts spent the better part of a year clearing up Welsh’s estate, which besides tidying up his business affairs also included offloading cars and planes and submersibles. As she was going through his personal files she found a trove of Ragtime memorabilia that Welsh had collected, including clippings of Infidel’s launch from the New Zealand Herald and Seaspray magazine. She became more endeared to the yacht as she started to understand the life that Ragtime had led.

In 2022 Tina Roberts called designer Alan Andrews, who has drawn a slew of light-displacement boats, and asked if he’d be interested in taking on the project. Andrews had worked on Ragtime for previous owners and also knew Chris Welsh well, having been a sailing instructor to him in his youth.

Roberts had a vision of Andrews being the project manager, but Andrews didn’t want to be involved if Roberts wasn’t leading the way. “I hung up the call with Alan very frustrated,” says Roberts.

“Then I thought about it a little bit and decided that I knew what Chris’s vision was and I began to really understand who Ragtime was. I became really interested in the historical side of it. So, I called Alan back and said ‘Let’s do the project’.”

20-year project

Roberts, who previously owned food processing companies in the Pacific Northwest, set a budget of $1 million to $1.2 million, a sum that she didn’t expect to reach.

But after completely stripping and rebuilding the interior, rebuilding the centre cockpit, wrapping the hull in carbon fibre and fabricating new chainplates to support the new mast, which also needed modifications to fit the hull and new carbon-fibre rigging, she estimates that she spent more than $1.5 million.

“Throughout a project like this you have many decisions to make,” Roberts says. “My mantra for the decision-making process was, is this for the next two years or next 20 years?

“If you make decisions for the next two years, the boat will never survive; it’s a 60-year-old boat built of plywood. So, I had to make decisions about what the next 20 years for the boat would look like because every time you have to go back and modify something else, it’s very expensive. So, I wanted to do it right the first time and ensure she has longevity.”

“Chris had a dream and a vision of what he wanted to do with the boat, and largely, the refit has been along those lines, except that it’s probably a bit more elegant,” says Andrews. “Tina didn’t take shortcuts. When she was presented with options for how things could be done, in nearly every case she did what was best for the boat.”

Andrews’ participation was important because he’d been involved in previous modifications to the yacht, including keel projects in the 1980s and working with Welsh in the 2000s. He noted how Ragtime’s hull construction was two layers of 3/8in marine plywood with the joints butted – not scarfed – over the middle span of the panel they lay upon. The interior structure included bulkheads, frames and longitudinal stringers.

“The interesting thing was the original bulkheads in the boat are hollow bulkheads with wood truss structure inside. So, there was quite some thought that went in the boat,” Andrews says. “Tina wanted to keep the spirit of Ragtime going, so when we added a few ring frames up forward they were done with plywood frames and laminated carbon and mahogany caps on them.”

Carbon wrap

Perhaps the biggest modernisation was wrapping the hull in two layers of carbon-fibre, a decision made squarely with the boat’s life expectancy in mind. While the plywood hull showed very little degradation given its 60-year age, there were some areas near the bow where a couple of veneers had deteriorated and there was some rot around some of the original chainplate fasteners.

Previous keel modifications had added carbon-fibre around the bottom in the keel area, but wrapping the hull in carbon stiffened the boat (it always had a problem with headstay sag) and helped to distribute the loads more evenly across the sections of plywood. “We chose to use carbon-fibre instead of glassfibre because carbon works much better with wood,” explains Andrews.

“Another thing that occurred with the boat over time was at the chine log, where the bottom panel meets the topsides. There’s an overlap there, a piece of wood and the glue joint on that is what keeps the topsides from separating from the bottom. “Crack repairs under previous ownership were evidenced by wider pieces of wood laminated inside,” Andrews continues.

“By wrapping carbon over the boat, we were effectively able to overlap on the outside of this joint, increasing the bonding area by patching over the joint and better distributing the loads.”

This section of the boat needed to take more load concentration because of the new TP52 mast. The height of the TP52 mast was similar to Ragtime’s previous mast, at least when measured from the spinnaker height to the deck.

But the previous mast had inline spreaders and a cap shroud with fore and aft lowers, meaning three attachment points for the shrouds, spreading their load over about 4½ft. The new TP52 rig has swept back spreaders with all shrouds attaching at the same point, but a point that is wider than Ragtime. The TP52 rig was designed for a 14ft beam while Ragtime’s beam is 11ft 8.5in.

Keeping the chainplates in the original location, just inboard of the hull and stringers, would’ve led to much narrower spreaders and increased compression loads. So, the chainplates were moved aft to match the spreader sweep angle and attached on the outside of the hull just below the sheerline.

The new rig makes the boat easier to handle, as it can now sail upwind with a 100% jib and full, square-head mainsail instead of the previous large overlapping genoa with a 1960s-era triangular mainsail.

The updated cockpit allows more room for the crew, but also access to the engine compartment, which was required to fit the engine Welsh had sourced – a Mercedes Benz OM660, a 0.8lt turbocharged diesel made for use in Smart cars. It weighs approximately 250lb/113kg, which is about 300lb/136kg lighter than the previous Yanmar engine that produced similar horsepower.

Lasting legacy

“The refit’s fantastic for the boat and an ode to all the sailors who’ve raced on her,” says Roberts. “We run into people all the time in California, Hawaii, Australia or New Zealand where if you bring up the boat’s name there’s a reply, ‘Oh, I sailed on Ragtime once.’ “That’s the tradition that we want to continue.

We want the boat to continue to be relevant, because she has so much history and so many stories to tell. It’s really important to continue that legacy.”

---

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

Build your knowledge with a subscription delivered to your door. See our latest offers and save at least 30% off the cover price.

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

---