| Hinckley 121 |  |
Back in 1996, when Alloy Yachts created 121-foot sloop
Atlanta, she was hailed by ShowBoats International as one of the finest yachts ever to come out of
New Zealand. But even the best things in life sooner or later yield to the
effects of time, and after eight years and two owners, Atlanta began showing some wear and tear under her
well-maintained red skin. Among other problems, her electrical system required
regular mending, and her generators were working overtime just to keep up. Her
electronics, originally installed by a reputable company that has since
succumbed to the passage of time (and finances), were far behind the
considerable technological advances in maritime navigation and communications
made since the mid-nineties.
| Click on the Design tab at top to see complete list of resources. |
Enter a woman who had never before owned a boat of any size,
one who didn’t know the first thing about yachting. Kylie Cappelli and her
husband, Louis, were lured in 2001 by a friend into looking at Atlanta. Stopping by their Long Island, New York, home
in his 95-foot sailboat, the friend showed them a brochure on the yacht.
Convinced of the yacht’s underlying quality, he wanted the couple to buy the
boat with him and maintain joint ownership.
 Kylie was suspicious. "I said, ‘This is ridiculous. It’s like a
money pit. What do you do, just sail around? How boring must that be?’" For
reasons unknown even to Kylie, they agreed to do a walk-through of the boat at
the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show and eventually bought it with their
friend. (Click image to enlarge.)
"It would take a crowbar to get me off the damn thing now,"
says Kylie. "I love the intimacy of a sailboat. A powerboat doesn’t have a soul.
This is a quieter kind of experience."
The Cappellis shared the boat with their friend for two years
and, during that time, learned volumes about boats and the yachting lifestyle.
When the ownership arrangement amicably ended, the couple walked away with full
title to the boat. By then the Cappellis knew what they did and did not like
about Atlanta, including some elements of her original
design. So the two set about changing them.
In June 2004, the owners chose the Hinckley yard in Rhode Island (reasonably
close to their New York base) for the refit. "We had a clear, defined mission,"
says Joe Kylie, project manager for the yard, "and that was to take a
10-year-old hull and put out a brand-new boat in an old skin." Everyone agreed that Atlanta’s biggest weaknesses were her
systems. "The integrity of the hull was fabulous. It was a well-built boat."
It helped that Hinckley could do everything in-house, from running electrical
systems to machining the many custom pieces original builder Alloy had made
for the yacht.
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