Bruce Kemp
The 8-Meter-class sloop SEVERN II was designed by Alfred Mylne and built by Bute Slip & Dock Co. in Scotland in 1934. A mid-race collision in 2023 sent her to the bottom of Lake Ontario.
In late spring 2023, Steve Reid, the Ontario, Canada-based owner and skipper of the modern 8-Meter-class sloop YQUEM, was forced, while racing, into a series of fast maneuvers off Toronto Islands that resulted in a collision that sank the historic 8-Meter SEVERN II. Although the event was traumatic for all involved, nobody was hurt, and the recovery that followed was remarkable.
It was a brilliant day with winds gusting between 15 and 20 knots; the seas were lumpy but not concerning. “The collision,” Reid recalled two months later, “was probably the result of a whole bunch of things that started going wrong.” The boats were on the first downwind leg of a double windward-leeward course. “We were hot on the heels of LAFAYETTE—another modern ’glass 8-Meter—and we’d been battling with them the whole downwind leg.”