Andy McCutcheon100 Years of Wooden Glory - Cherubini Yachts
September 6th 2007 12:03
Gentlemens Cruiser
Cherubini Yachts
John Cherubini, patriarch and founding father of the modern boat design maintenance and repair facility located in Delran New Jersey along with siblings Frit, Richard, Joe, Tom, Mary and Jen, grew up in their fathers boat yard in Burlington NJ where they produced quality Moths, Thistle and Lightening class sailboats alongside small skiffs and dinghies.
As with many success stories, John surprisingly enough did not complete his high school education but in 1938, in the absence of a formal education, he discovered he was naturally gifted as an artist with an above average understanding of engineering concepts and combined those two gifts alongside a correspondence course in yacht design to round out his skills.
During WWII, John built aircraft for the war effort and in doing so, gained invaluable insight into working with modern materials with a view to creating fast and efficient machines. Formally trained engineers would often reduce John’s naturally gifted designs to algorithmic equations – and when they did – they almost always turned out perfect. He drew things instinctively, from the heart - and they worked, much the same as some people’s ability to pick up an instrument and just play it by ear.
After the war, John and his brother Frit started Cherubini Yachts and began by building small outboard runabouts they called Sea-Scamps. By the late 1940’s, John made his first sailboat sketches, taking inspiration from the Chesapeake Bay Bugeye whose shallow drafted design would work well in the largely tidal region.
By the 1970’s, John met up with Warren Luhrs who was in the process of moving out of building timber fishing vessels and into the modern Hunter Yachts and John designed their first offering – the Hunter 25’. During the early years at Luhrs, John became their principal designer and went on to design the Hunter 27, 30, 33, 37 and 54. When Luhrs entered the powerboat market in 1977 John designed the Mainship 34 and 40 cruisers.
Back on the home front, John designed a 26’ trailerable center cockpit sailboat that was built in the first Cherubini shop located in Camden NJ and another company was set up to produce 33’ raiders, of which 25 were built between 1977 and 1983, when the vision to move from rented premises in Camden to interim purpose built facilities in Florence.
Brothers John and Frit finally had the ideal incubator for producing boats – and Johns dream and master builder Frit alongside his apprentice son Lee began going to work.
By this time, fibreglass had pervaded the boat building industry and both Frit and Lee were mindful of the advantages and limitations of this product, electing to use fibreglass where it was most useful and using wood finished to grand piano quality where it worked best, ending up with both beauty and functionality in the marriage of both products.
“White Hawk”, a Cherubini 44 was a new beginning for the Cherubini’s and its striking sheer line and handsome good looks has turned more than a few heads in the Chesapeake over the years and was perhaps the beginning of this marriage of convenience between fibreglass and wood.
Frit sailed “White Hawk” until 1980 when he sailed her to the Stamford CT boat show and came home several days later with deposits for three new builds. The enormous strength that Frit used in the construction of his brothers design was soon to be tested in biblical proportions.
In late 1989 when Hurricane Hugo came ashore in Charleston North Carolina, it killed 26 people and completely destroyed 5100 homes with wind speeds upwards of 220 kilometers per hour and storm surge of 6.5 meters. An earlier built Cherubini 44 was driven ashore in the storm and after it had subsided amidst carnage for as far as the eye could see, “First Light” was simply dragged off the beach and sailed back to her home berth and has just recently (2004) undergone a restoration.
These vessels were designed to sail over the horizon and after a quarter century of exposure to the sea and all that the “old man” has to offer, many of them are making their way back upstream like vigilant spawning salmon to return to their birth place in Delran NJ to be returned to their former glory by current proprietor Dave Cherubini – who carries on the longstanding Cherubini traditions of fine boat building.
In addition to the line of sailing vessels, Dave has recently ventured into a 1950’s style retro – runabout market with a twenty-footer they have designed, marrying the same style, tradition and composition of their time tested sailing yachts and like many of the purveyors of tradition, it owes its style and inspirational beauty to the founding fathers of the golden age of boating but at the same time it definitely has the Cherubini signature.
In a telephone interview in preparation for writing this book, I asked Dave what inspired him to continue to build traditional or classically styled boats in the face of the vast majority of boat builders today creating designs in fibreglass and high tech composites and his answer was simple, – “I want to build real boats” – “there are too many “space shuttles” out there and even as a young boy I have been immensely respectful of the sea.” He went on to say, “I am the new generation of boat builder, using the available technology to preserve the timeless designs of yesteryear, while utilizing maintenance free technology.”
It is a sentiment that many of the modern boat builders share and to a certain degree I feel that the Baby-Boomers are driving the market, but perhaps to a lesser degree, the resurgence of classically styled boats may be attributed to builders like Dave Cherubini who are perpetuating these timeless designs through use of the ever evolving technologies available to us.
Andy McCutcheon, 100 Years of Wooden Glory. Copyright 2006
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