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Credit: DanielForster.com/IYRS

Coronet: America's oldest yacht continues extensive restoration

8 December 2022 • Written by Katia Damborsky

The 40.5 metre Coronet has been moved to Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut for the final stage of a near thirty-year restoration.  

The wood-hulled sailing yacht still has three years of restoration work ahead of her and will remain on display at the museum for the remainder of the project. Exact details of the project remain under wraps, but it is understood that the interior will be the next point of focus.

The yacht was acquired by Newport-based IYRS School of Technology and Trades in 1995, and she was scaled back to the frame and sliced in half in order to be rebuilt.  In 2004, she was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Built in 1885 at New York-based shipyard Poillon, Coronet is the oldest registered yacht in the US and has had a number of high-profile owners, including oil tycoon Rufus T. Bush and railroad magnate Arthur Curtiss James, one of the wealthiest men in America in the 1900s.

She famously won a transatlantic race with a cash prize of $10,000 in 1887 and has circumnavigated the globe with visits to Africa, Hawaii, China and the Middle East.

The yacht is now under the care of hospitality group Crew.

More about this yacht

Poillon   40.54 m •  1885

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