"Sir Shackleton": Pilot cutter went aground and serves as a training ship after refit
No owner needs a call like that, especially early in the morning: "Hello Klaus, my husband is rowing through the buoy field, he thinks you should come out, the 'Sir' has sunk." Klaus Gattinger remembers exactly what he heard on that Wednesday, 18 August five years ago. And thought: Fucking joke! He also remembers the hours that followed. He has just hung up when the doorbell rings. It's the police. "Is this boat yours?" - "Yes." - "It's sunk." - "No. That's impossible. The. Can. Not. Sink!"
Other special boats:
Klaus Gattinger, 59, nevertheless sets off for the western shore of Lake Ammersee. His "Sir Shackleton" is a classic pilot cutter with a hundred years on the planks, with a buoy mooring in front of the Catholic church of St Alban, built right on the shore, 15th century, baroqueised three hundred years later, golden. "I went out there with the dinghy. The two masts are still sticking out of the water. And the 'Sir' lies at a depth of seven metres." Klaus Gattinger only ever uses the form of address "Sir" when talking about the "Sir Shackleton". The first spreader is now the waterline. "I called the insurance company and they said, calm down. I. Am. Calm down! They'll send someone right away."
Three quarters of an hour after the call, Gregor Franke is standing next to St. Alban's Church, the surveyor lives on the other side of the lake, just 19 kilometres away. "I told Klaus Gattinger that we'd get it all fixed. In the meantime, the water rescue service had arrived, but we quickly realised that there weren't enough lifting bags on the Ammersee to lift a ten-tonne ship." For the time being, all the owner can do this morning is worry.
A rusted-through flange becomes a disaster
Today we head out to the "Sir Shackleton", eleven metres, two masts, an absolute pike in a goldfish bowl, the Ammersee is just 16 kilometres long, six wide, the yacht is quite big for such a small area. Five years have passed since the sinking, so the "Sir Shackleton" is afloat again. It's a windy day, looming clouds roll in over St Alban's, the other berth holders jerk at their buoys. Sails up, without an engine, they head out onto the open lake between the much smaller boats. And Klaus Gattinger tells us what happened next. And what the flag, starboard dinghy, is all about.
On the Monday after the sinking, the lifting armada of nine boats gathers around the two masts sticking out of the water an hour and a half before sunrise, with plenty of mast drop, they stab diagonally into the still dark Bavarian sky and Klaus Gattinger in the heart, the seabed falls away significantly here. The cutter must have made a soft landing, it is stuck in the silt up to the waterline, the seven divers determine. "They tied the airbags to the jetties, and the lift with a total of thirty people worked wonderfully."
Expert Gregor Franke climbs aboard the "Sir" after it emerges. "I got in there and had a look round. The first thing I did was remove the companionway." And he immediately sees: Aha, the sea valve. It's open. "The cooling water hose leads to a water pump that was installed in 1952, a 30-kilogram part. And the boat builders probably tightened it too much when they installed it, there was a hairline crack, and it took almost eighty years for the flange to rust through." Today, Klaus Gattinger closes the valves after every day of sailing, "but until then, my rule was: opening and closing the valves too much is not good for them either."
Pilot cutter with leakage problems
Klaus Gattinger back then: taken along. The ship: up. But by no means in good health, "in a pretty lousy condition actually. Engine up the arse. Electrical system fucked. Everything, everything didn't look good." A friend who had gone down with him had sheared the "Sir Shackleton" flag from under the spreaders and washed it at home. Even before the yacht docked on its own keel at the dockyard, he set it again, a hopeful flutter in the August breeze. In the early afternoon, the bottom seeker is ready to be launched. After all, the planks of the "Sir Shackleton" are now well swollen, "now she would be watertight", the surveyor realises.
It's quite jinxed. When the hull should have been tight, years before, when the boat was bought, it was not. The yacht stood on land for years until Klaus Gattinger and his partner took it over and had it transported to the Ammersee. Christoph Hagenmayer, head of the Steinlechner shipyard, is used to classic yachts. He is also used to strange weight specifications. The previous owners had stated that the yacht was to weigh eight tonnes, which the mobile crane hoisted onto its slip carriage. "9.5 tonnes" was now shown on the crane's display. Christoph Hagenmayer's frown turned into a washboard.
He was less unsettled by the fact that such a solid wooden boat initially sinks at the dock. This breathtaking procedure usually takes several days, during which pumps repeatedly remove what seeps in through the dry plank joints from the doomed yacht. "But then Christoph said we'd get an easterly wind, the thing had to get away from the jetty. Then we went to the buoy, my business partner Christian quickly got his things, and we fired up the diesel every half hour for four days and nights as soon as the water had risen up to the floorboards again, three hundred to four hundred litres each time." Yet Klaus and Christian had bought the "Sir Shackleton" precisely so that she would be ready for challenges.
Pilot cutter is a training ship
Maritime challenges as lessons for professional hurdles, the boat is intended as a seminar yacht. "And then I was sitting back here," he points aft to starboard in the cockpit, "I was in serious doubt. Only the shipyard employees were relaxed: 'You just have to wait a bit, pump a bit, oh, it'll be tight ...'" It really was a touchstone. And his capital was in danger of sinking. But it worked. The wells and the seminars. The planks actually sealed each other over time. And in the beginning, Klaus Gattinger found it difficult to convince the decision-makers in the companies that a day of seminars on board with him cost just as much as a training course in a four-star hotel. "But here it all happens twice as fast."
We are now sailing half-wind, the west is now trumpeting gusts across the Ammersee, the shrouds are sighing, the leech of the mainsail is constantly popping. The "Sir Shackleton" has been afloat again for two years. The "Sir" is no sailing antelope, certainly not. In fact, the yacht is so heavy that no crane on the lake can lift her and a mobile crane has to be ordered twice a year. But that doesn't matter for her job. After all, if you want to learn to ride a bike, you don't do it on a titanium racing bike with two dozen gears.
"The great thing is that the influence of my participants on board is quite limited. You have a ship, a crew, you have to communicate, you have to work hand in hand during the manoeuvres. Otherwise, the tacking angle is more like 100 degrees, which leaves 260 degrees of compass rose for sailing. We can still reduce the sail area, that's it. We had a top manager and wanted to cast off from the buoy under sail. I was at the bow, he was at the tiller. He always asked, 'Are you ready to go?' and I said, 'You have to wait until the ship is right so that it doesn't run over the buoy or the dinghy and so that we can get out well between the others at the buoys. And then it took another minute, and I still said: 'Nope, not yet, nope, still not the right moment'." In fact, it probably took three minutes, it felt like ten. Then the right moment came, line loose, rudder hard to starboard and away. "He worked on it for half the day."
Experiential education measures for company managers
The manager: "How many times have I put my head through the wall in recent years! Because there was a deadline, because there was a goal, I don't know. And if only I had waited for the right moment, it would have been much easier." However, discarding was not even planned as part of the seminar. Gattinger: "I had already realised that he would have preferred to give the order: Engine on! Check! Now! And I always said: 'No, just a little longer'." But the economy demands that his customers work in a goal-orientated way, he says, and he sees managers as strongly capital-driven. "And with them, the ship is always working for me. Especially when it's calm." Klaus Gattinger smiles mischievously. "The stress test for the seminar participants."
So the whole seminar sailing on a classic yacht as an experiential educational measure, only with the staff on the upper floors? The tiller of the "Sir" as a practice station for business leaders? Incidentally, they usually expect a proper steering wheel. Which doesn't exist on board, where you steer with the piunne. Sailing against the wind is a compulsory exercise in upper management. Klaus Gattinger regularly includes them in his on-board training sessions. "I'm just saying, you get a destination, that's Herrsching. A turn there. The person with the navigator role then goes down and at some point calls out that the course is 40 degrees. But then: Oh, what's going on now? The boat is broken! Crap! It's not going forwards at all! Sometimes this is also a critical moment. They put the boat into the wind, but it doesn't work the way they want it to. They are so focussed on the goal." It often takes time, he says, "until someone has the idea of finding the basic principle of cruising. Then the first impulses come, sometimes some have heard something from Boris Herrmann about how he explained cruising."
Klaus Gattinger then tells his company managers how they can only get to Herrsching via detours, that the direct route is not the quickest way to the destination, they actually realise it themselves, his words. Sometimes he also talks about Manfred Curry, who was a sailing innovator. And who lived here on the shore. His villa is now a training centre and he often books it when seminars are to be held on land. Curry, inventor of the clamp of the same name, had a rather eccentric motorised ship built at the same shipyard, by Steinlechner, based on a slender steamboat hull. There were curves at the top, quite similar to the gondola of a zeppelin, and a marble bathtub was enthroned in the stern, something probably had to replace the weight of the dismantled steam engine.
Tenacity of the namesake as a motivational aid
So seminars on a traditional sailing ship can be marketed in this environment, and they cover the considerable maintenance costs? "Over the years, it turned out that the on-board seminars are not booked enough. There are always two of us on board for the training courses, it's fun, but we only earn money with early bird mini trips at sunrise, with taster sails during the day or with moonlight trips, i.e. the co-sailing activities." The tax office cancelled the VAT option years later, as the income was just enough.
When the "Sir" sank, it quickly became clear that even with insurance assistance, the refit hardly seemed possible. "I had breakfast with the family once and then scrapping was the topic." "Dad, you can't be serious about giving up the 'Sir'," said his daughter. "You love this ship, you love sailing this ship!" His mind wouldn't allow it, but then he began to strip the ship bare, peel off all the paint, dry it thoroughly and reapply all the layers of paint. "I don't need to do that again, it was a hard time," he says. But also: "So many positive aspects have come out of this downfall. The many people who helped, who said we want this ship to float again." His daughter helped, "she had to, because she was the catalyst". When they pulled the ship out of the shipyard - again, the budget had been used up - she asked Christoph Hagenmayer for an internship. He then offered her an apprenticeship.
And Klaus Gattinger always tried to orientate himself on the legendary tenacity of his namesake. For a project on leadership in crises, he read about Shackleton's expeditions and his legendary, desperate yet successful rescue journey in a tiny boat in the roar of the breakers between Antarctica and the nearest accessible island, South Georgia. Klaus Gattinger, his admirer. But not an ardent one: "Shackleton is neither an icon nor an angel. He wasn't a good husband or a good father either. And he was also a lousy businessman. But he was at his best in times of crisis." "It's not going to work, let us die in peace!" people would have said. "No, we won't die!" was his reply. He got everyone to South America safely.
For the brave, the worst suddenly becomes the best
The storm warning lights, a peculiarity of inland lakes where the horizon does not extend far enough to see the gusts coming, are now flashing. "That's the normal six, it doesn't worry us, but the storm is coming." Klaus Gattinger has confidence in himself and the "Sir". But he is also cautious: "Where does the skipper experience the best storm? In the harbour pub. Sometimes it's better not to set sail." Oh, everything is a parable for his seminars. Sometimes he experiences participants who say: "Failure is not an option." Huh, that's where he comes in: "If failure isn't an option, you're probably not pushing yourself to your limits. People who are not allowed to fail may only see a breakdown as a way out."
So what do we do: head back to the buoy or keep steering out the gusts? Which is fun with the "Sir", she's right on the rudder. "For suddenly the worst turns the best to the brave", the verse from the poem by Robert Browning, was Shackleton's leitmotif and also his, the long-suffering owner explains the confidence; for the brave, the worst suddenly becomes the best. That's what happened with the sinking. And there is one more statement before heading back to the buoy: "The skipper doesn't necessarily have to be the best sailor on board, but the helmsman does."
Pack up, close the sea valve, take the dinghy back to the boathouse on the shore, take down the oilskins, stow the dinghy, the front is already beating on the birches. Tomorrow morning we set off again, an early bird trip with guests.
Was "Sir" once "Gertrud"?
The "Sir Shackleton" first took to the water in 1909 as the pilot cutter "Gertrud", commissioned by the town of Travemünde, which was still independent at the time. Max Oertz had designed it. Now, like the legendary Meteor yachts, its cracks are much racier and, above all, designed for speed. The "Gertrud" is much fuller.
But wait, it is not certain that "Sir Shackleton" and "Gertrud" are one and the same yacht. Her speed, or rather relative speed, speaks in favour of the Oertz-Riss. Even in light winds, she sails so light-footedly that the yardstick formula counts her as a winner in classic races on the Ammersee with her almost ten tonnes. It is known that the "Gertrud" was converted into a yacht in 1925, after which her course is lost. Conversely, it is not clear what the history of the "Sir Shackleton" was before 1952.
One thing is certain: Ernst Evers, owner of the shipyard on Timmendorfer Strand, takes the yacht for himself. Again there is no date, but Willy Möllenbruck, a Hamburg haulage merchant, falls in love with the lines, buys the former professional cutter and sails her until his death in 1992. Five years follow in a warehouse in Burg on Fehmarn. It was not until 1997 that a couple from Hamburg bought the yacht, she was refitted for the third time, and in 1998 she was put into the water and sailed in the North Sea and Baltic Sea for a dozen years. Then in 2011, Klaus Gattinger bought her. And the transport to the Ammersee. "The ship is completely oversized here. When we brought it to the lake, people laughed their heads off: 'What are they doing here? The average size on the lake is seven metres."
The ship had pushed boundaries, he says. After the night-time sinking, it was almost impossible to refit the yacht despite the insurance payment. A circular letter raised donations and volunteer hours. The "Sir Shackleton" has been sailing again since August 2023.
Technical data of the pilot cutter "Sir Shackleton"
- Year of construction (uncertain): 1909
- Designer (unsure): Max Oertz
- Length: 11.30 metres
- Width: 3.50 metres
- Depth: 1.60 metres
- Displacement: 9.5 tonnes
- Rig: Ketch rigging
- sail area: approx. 70 m2
- Hull material: Mahogany planks, oak planks, teak rod deck
