Ten prettiest sailing yachts ever. Seven: UandI

My last choice, the Rustler 33, was controversial, as I knew it would be. I’m equally certain that this one won’t be. The 24ft (7.4m) LOD sliding gunter yacht UandI was designed by William Fife III in and built by Hutchisons of Carrickfergus in 1897, to race on Belfast Lough. She was first found by Alastair Garland in 1995, but it wasn’t until 2011 that he decided enough was enough, and took on a rescue, with wife Mary and naval architect Paul Spooner. By that point she had been living in a field for 16 years and playing home to a wasps’ nest the size of a football. Tom Cunliffe covered the story of the big rebuild in the September 2022 issue of Classic Boat and UandI went on to win the magazine’s Restoration of the Year award in her size category in 2023. They sometimes say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes it is, as the Rustler 33 proved. Beauty of a more startling, obvious nature, as here, is much less subjective. If you showed 100 people a picture of this and a picture of a modern GRP equivalent, at least 95 would surely make the right choice. It’s hard to describe the elements that create beauty. A counter stern is, somehow, always pleasing to the eye, along with a sheerline. Another less well understood aspect of beauty is wasted space. Long bonnets, high ceilings and, in this case, a great expanse of straight-laid varnished deck in Alaskan yellow cedar, outlined in a thin coverboard and toerail in teak. The tiny, elliptical cockpit acts as a contrast to the straight lines, completing the picture.