As a fan of Art Deco, I’ve been fascinated by the J Class yachts. These are the luxury yachts built inbetween the two world wars by some of  the wealthiest men in Britain and America – King George, Mortimer Singer, Thomas Lipton and others. They were built to race across oceans and despite being functional they are extremely beautiful. Sadly, they were all either sunk, abandoned or recycled by the beginning of the Second World War when such displays of austentation were not ‘the done thing’. Besides, I would imagine that trans-Atlantic racing was a bit too dangerous in the middle of a War!

About three years ago, I was lucky enough to stumble upon a box of negatives in a Cornish auction room. In amongst the family holiday photos were pictures of a regatta held off Falmouth in 1927. And there were negatives of the yachts that preceded the J Class! It took a long time to find a way to move the images from negatives to digital, but I did it, and here’s a picture to prove it:

Westward, Lulworth, Britannia and Shamrock racing off Falmouth in 1927.

The reason I’m so excited about this today is that I have spent the day watching the modern J Class yachts racing off Falmouth. These gorgeous yachts are sleek, fast and just as beautiful as the originals.

Here’s a picture from Lottie Richardson, who is following the racing on Twitter for the host marina:

b J Class racing off Falmouth in 2012

You can see more of Lottie’s amazing photos at: www.lottierichardson.com and follow the link for her twitter blog: #jclass_blog

I’m using the visit of the J Class to launch an on-line shop selling both the vintage and modern images: www.strandimages.com.

I hope that this will grow to include the best of my collection of vintage pictures, please let me know what you think.