"Fate has given me this ship!" Tommy Loewe is visibly happy in the cockpit of his "Herta", which he almost completely fills with fellow sailor Dana and a richly laid breakfast table. It is midsummer on the Schlei. At the jetty of Willy Stapelfeldt's shipyard, the little yawl doesn't even stand out amidst the numerous classic boats. But its skipper, gesticulating, tells the story of how he ended up on board here in Grauhöft and is having breakfast. When he's not telling the story.
If you carefully manoeuvre yourself across the narrow aft deck past the delicate mizzen to the bay, take a seat behind a mug of coffee on the forecastle and listen to owner Loewe's stories, you will soon realise that you are meeting two true originals here. A trained wooden boat builder in his early 60s and his ten-metre "Frisia-type touring cruiser", completed by Abeking & Rasmussen in 1923, with which he recently fulfilled his long-cherished dream.
"It had to be a wooden ship, not too big, built before the war and something special," says Loewe, "but habitable". Because the H-dinghy "Herta II", which he had previously sailed on the Alster for 15 years, was not.
Compared to his travelling dinghy, which gave Loewe's new love her current name, the "Herta" is a palace. Right next to the companionway are the pilot's berth and galley with sink and gimballed cooker. The saloon has sofa berths, a table and lockers. The forepeak houses a WC and a cane bunk, which was once intended for the paid boy.
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A classic with the space of a doll's house
However, the presence of everything that was considered a standard of comfort in the year of construction should not hide the fact that the furnishings in the belly of the "Herta" are the size of a doll's house. The dimensions speak for themselves. A living room on four square metres with a roof at shoulder height inevitably leads to the proverbial cosiness.
Despite their small format, Henry Rasmussen's drawings show a veritable ocean-going yacht. Exactly what Loewe was looking for when he first laid eyes on the "Aeolus", as his "Herta" was called at the time. After an Atlantic cruise on "Peter von Seestermühe" in spring 2021, the Alster suddenly seemed too small for him. "I sat there on my boat and thought: 'This can't be everything'."
A small inheritance helps him decide to realise his increasingly common daydream and set off in search of a sea-going vessel. It should be made of wood, but not in need of restoration, and a real character, just like him. When the Hamburg native tells his life story, he starts with the boy from Blankenes who rowed owners to their dinghies in the buoy field on the banks of the Elbe at the end of the 1960s.
Loewe has always loved wood
At the Mühlenberg Sailing Club, he boards sailable dinghies and youth cutters and finally ends up on a pirate, travelling across Denmark in the summer. Formative youthful years full of freedom. "The parents just said: 'Let the boys go!' That was cool!"
After leaving school, the "wood freak" learns boatbuilding at Bieritz and continues his sailing career on the "Elan" owned by Pantaenius boss Harald Baum, who introduces him to ocean sailing and takes him on board as a boatswain. Albert Bülls "Saudade" conveys.
"That's when I smelled the scent of the wide world, on Mallorca among all the boat people from France, America, England and so on," says Loewe with a broad grin, hinting at the "great things" he had experienced.
His career later took him to southern Germany, where he sailed Libera and discovered his passion for regattas. Back in Hamburg, he indulged his passion on the aforementioned H dinghy, which he acquired in 2003 and which he has sailed on the Alster ever since, when he is not taking part in the relevant meetings of the North German scene as a regatta crew on classic boats.
Loewe finds the love of his life
Today, Loewe is getting its own classic ready for sea. It's his second summer on board and he's getting the hang of it. Tommy Loewe wears a Breton fisherman's shirt and a wine-red docker's cap and talks without interruption as he works on deck. "I was instantly in love," he says, describing his first encounter with the then "Aeolus" in Kiel's Plüschowhafen harbour in the early summer of 2021. "Such a pretty boat, lovingly restored, and yet you can tell it's almost 100 years old. A fantastic line, the deck just 30 centimetres above the water, a long yacht stern and a small bowsprit, large main mast, small mizzen. Everything below deck is new, but lovingly kept in the style of the 1920s."
And then the construction. The hull is made of larch on oak and steel frames, the new stem is made of 300-year old oak, the roof is made of Carolina pine, the cabin walls, deck and timbers are made of teak, the interior is made of mahogany, the floorboards are made of oak and the spars are made of spruce.
Nevertheless, Loewe does not take the decision to buy lightly. He wants to get his wife on board in the truest sense of the word and also carefully calculates whether the berth, insurance and regular maintenance costs fit his budget. The promises of the shipyard and winter storage and the advice of several sailing friends finally tip the balance.
Loewe does not regret the purchase
Today, owner Loewe is happily at the helm, manoeuvring his boat out of the harbour under engine power. It is almost like a transformation as the small yawl moves out of the harbour between the larger boats and sets sail against the backdrop of the shoreline landscape. Deprived of the visual scale of her harbour surroundings, she appears larger with every cable from the jetty and grows like the mock giant Mr Tur Tur from Michael Ende's children's book "Jim Button", until her silhouette on the horizon gives the impression that she is twice as big.
On deck, the sailors stand on the ground and try not to run over each other on the small surface, while the large genoa is set and the sheets are tightened. As the Schleimünde beacon points abeam and the wind blows around the corner of the pier into the huge sail, "Herta" nestles into the sea.
All the sails are up, the sun makes the paintwork, wet from the spray, shine, and it sounds like a song of wanderlust in our ears as the little yawl noisily pushes six tonnes of salt water in front of her.
Meanwhile, Tommy Loewe sits at the helm and radiates a deep sense of satisfaction. "A jewel has fallen at my feet, into which the previous owner has put an incredible amount of love and effort."
I'm almost embarrassed to sit in this nest I've made"
The classic has an eventful history
The previous owner is Thomas Koebke. He took over the then "Aeolus" in 2002 as a restoration project and spent around 4,500 hours restoring her to her original 1923 condition with a boat builder between 2006 and 2008.
At that time, the ship was launched at A&R in Lemwerder as construction number 1791. Unlike her four sister ships of the "Frisia" type built between 1920 and 1924, she had no engine and was high-rigged. The client was Dr Heimann from Berlin. He called the ship "Hai". Not much more is known about the first years of its life. After the war, it sailed as the "Raja IV" under the NRV flag and finally as the "Aeolus" under the Hamburg owner Böning, who sailed voyages as far as Oslo and Stockholm, almost exotic long-haul destinations in the post-war period.
After Böning's death - he died on board in 1968 - his daughter took over the reigns of "Aeolus" and managed the yawl from her home harbour in Niendorf. After almost 30 years of sailing, she handed the beloved ship over to a friend, who placed it in the care of a shipyard.
Breathing new life into the classic
The project stalled and was eventually forgotten - until Koebke took up the cause. Initially with extensive research into the history and construction methods of his new passion and preparation of the work. He tracks down the original plans, finds a suitable location for the project, a wooden boat builder who can help, and locates a sister ship on Lake Constance, whose owner welcomes him to take a look at the original condition.
Work finally began in May 2006 under a simple tarpaulin roof. The interior fittings had already been completely removed by this time and unfortunately some of them had been lost. Now Koebke and his boat builder are getting to work on the more than 80-year-old hull. He has recorded his memories in a documentation of the work.
The red wooden keel and the lower three courses of the larch panelling had already been replaced in the early 1990s. "Unfortunately, the feet of the oak frames were drilled out in the process, meaning that a number of frame feet first had to be re-laminated and fitted before the sandblasted and freshly galvanised floor cradles could take their place again," says Koebke, whose efforts to preserve his "Aeolus" are hampered by numerous such unprofessionally carried out jobs from the past.
Koebke and his boat builder, however, are not satisfied with half measures. They are replacing the stem and cabin roof, overhauling the teak superstructure and installing new bulkheads in the ship. Their credo is to preserve as much of the original substance as possible. The ship is not to be reconstructed, but carefully restored to the condition it was in when it was built, without taking away its visible history. Expert Uwe Baykowski will later describe their endeavours as "stylish and professional".
A regatta as an incentive
Once the hull had been thoroughly refurbished in August 2007, the idea of taking part in the German Classics a year later, on the ship's 85th birthday, was born. An ambitious goal that really gets things moving again. The interior is recreated based on the original model of the sister ship from Lake Constance. Below deck, in addition to the boat-building tasks, there are also new technical puzzles to solve, and a new Yanmar comes on board.
In August 2008, "Aeolus" is actually hanging in the crane, closely watched by the owner's friends armed with champagne glasses, who have been invited to the second launching and are now marvelling as the spruced-up jubilarian first goes down to the depths. Koebke spends the first night on board, illuminated by the radiant full moon, romantically next to the running pumps. But after three days, the bilge is dry, and after a week, the first trial run takes place.
Together with his wife, Thomas Koebke spent many happy hours on board in the years that followed. They sailed the western Baltic Sea at weekends and on their summer holidays, but after a good ten years, the desire for a little more living comfort gave birth to the idea of looking for a suitable successor for "Aeolus" - at the end of which Tommy Loewe's ownership began.
Loewe has big plans
Loewe's eyes light up as he sits at the tiller and talks about his sailing plans. Exploring the neighbourhood of his home port with his wife, going to the start of the relevant classic regattas with friends or even setting off on a longer trip if someone wants to come along. After all, his "Herta" is not least intended to bring him together with like-minded people. "It's also about being part of a community with the boat," says Loewe, who is also a volunteer in the Freundeskreis Klassische Yachten.
The results of "Herta's" first season under her lively new owner look really colourful in autumn. The adventures in her wake range from races to single-handed trips. There were engine failures, cable fires, lines in the propeller and grounding, nights at anchor and under sail, tough crosswinds and doldrums.
"If you want atmosphere, you have to show commitment"
This is Loewe's unusually succinct comment. And that he himself would not have expected so much effort. Which also alludes to the winters he has already spent working on his "Herta". He calls this time of year his second season and says that he enjoys travelling to Grödersby, where the boat is kept - in master boat builder Niels Engel's old coal shed.
It is pure relaxation to devote himself to the care of his classic here, says Loewe, who also enjoys being among his peers. An immersion in a world, his world, that is still predominantly analogue, where it smells of wood and where people communicate with each other primarily through conversation. Like here on board, on "Herta", ex-"Aeolus", with which her new owner already seems to have grown together as if the duo had always existed.
Technical data "Herta", ex-"Aeolus"
Cruiser yacht type "Frisia" - Abeking & Rasmussen 1923
- Material larch/oak
- Total length 10.40 m
- Hull length 9.89 m
- Waterline length 7.00 m
- Width 2.34 m
- Draught 1.40 m
- Displacement 6.3 tonnes
- Sail area 55.5 square metres
