Ted Hood's Weekend Aboard a Living Legend: Racing Viola at NYYC Race Week Newport
When you race a 1908 gaff-rigged Fife cutter that has been restored to its original rigging plan, every tack, gybe, and set of the sails feels like a conversation with a century of history. This is what sailing the classics is all about, and it’s exactly what it was like for our own Ted Hood this past weekend, sailing aboard Viola during New York Yacht Club’s Race Week at Newport.
Viola is a 1908 William Fife III-designed gaff cutter. She is 42 feet of old-growth timber elegance, sometimes called the Stradivarius of her era. She was completely restored in the early 2000s and sails today under the burgee of the Yacht Club de Monaco, owned and skippered by Kostia Belkin. This summer she’s a long way from her usual Mediterranean waters — and for Ted, a rare chance to sail a true piece of yachting history.
An Ocean Away, For a Good Reason
Viola crossed the Atlantic by cargo ship earlier this summer, arrived in New York Harbor in mid-June, and was re-rigged and relaunched to join her “big sister,” the 1909 flagship Tuiga, for a summer-long American tour celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The two Monegasque gaff cutters kicked things off with real nautical fanfare in New York — Viola herself won the Monaco Challenge Cup, the opening event of the campaign, before the pair joined the tall ships and naval vessels gathering for the city’s Sail4th 250 celebrations.
From there, the boats visited Larchmont Yacht Club and Seawanhaka Yacht Club, among others, on their way up the coast for the classic summer New England regatta circuit. That’s how a Fife cutter built in a Scottish shipyard in 1908, flying a Monaco burgee, ended up lining up on the start line at this year’s New York Yacht Club Race Week at Newport — with Ted aboard for the ride.
The Crew Behind the Boat
Kostia and his tight-knit French crew treat Viola less like a competition machine and more like a piece of living history that happens to still know how to fly. Due to her old-style rigging, boat handling is complex and requires a crew of nine. This particular crew has raced her together for the past ten years and has perfected the way they handle her, showing an obvious pride in keeping an original early-20th-century design not just preserved, but genuinely competitive. They have poured real passion into restoring and racing an original work of art, and it shows the moment you step aboard.
Viola handled the racing with the kind of grace you’d hope for from a Fife design, and the crew handled it with good humor, spontaneous group cheers, and no shortage of laughter. Ted remarked that seeing the crew enjoy an espresso break on the downwind leg was a first for him — a small, charming reminder that this crew races hard without ever losing their sense of both civility and fun.
Fair Winds to Viola
A huge thank you to Kostia — Viola’s “keeper” in every sense of the word — and his crew for bringing this remarkable yacht across the Atlantic and showcasing her up and down the East Coast this summer. It’s not a small thing to maintain, sail, and race a 118-year-old wooden yacht at this level, let alone to do it with such warmth and generosity toward the sailors lucky enough to join them for a weekend — Ted among them, and clearly grateful for it.
Here’s to more classic summer regattas, more shared cockpits between old friends and new ones, and to boats like Viola that remind all of us why we fell in love with sailing in the first place.
Fair winds, Viola — see you down the coast.
