Elena

Story

In 1910 Morton Plant commissioned Elena to be designed by American naval architect Nathanael Herreshoff, the “Wizard of Bristol”, who was famed for designing sailing yachts for America’s elite.

Plant gave a wonderful design brief: build me a schooner that can win! Herreshoff gave Elena a slightly deeper keel than preceding designs of that time, lowering her centre of ballast, which improved her windward ability.
Fresh out of the shed, Elena won most of her early races against the cream of the American schooner fleet. Seventeen years later came her crowning glory – victory in the 1928 Trans-Atlantic Race.

Elena and Zaoli: an exciting story

We made several sails for Elena, including mainsails, jibs, gaff-topsails etc., and two asymmetric spinnakers, one of which bearing a big red logo, for a total of nearly 2,000 square meters made in 10 days specifically for the 2016 edition of the “Regates royales de Cannes”.

“The S/V Elena sails all year long: she spends her summers in the Mediterranean and on winters she moves to the Caribbean.
She sails a huge amount of miles, so one of our main concerns is to collaborate with a sailmaker who can give us both good sails and a reliable sail care service.
During our six-years-old collaboration with Zaoli Sailmakers, we always enjoyed in-time deliveries and excellent sails, both for racing and for our countless ocean passages.”

Steve McLaren

Type	A class racing schooner
Designer	Nathanael G. Herreshoff
Builder	Factoria Naval De Marin Galicia, Spain
Year	2009
Length over spars	55.00
Hull length	41.60
Waterline length	29.60
Beam	8.14
Draft	5.20
Sail area	1.800
Displacement	215.00