Río de la Plata Class: the sloop that arrived buried in coal

The story of this sloop begins buried in coal. Around the years of Bartolomé Mitre, a small but influential British community was cementing its Victorian customs in the country. Among them, competitive sailing.

The Yacht Club Río de la Plata was founded in 1908 and soon wanted a boat of its own: one that could serve as a helmsman's school, cruiser and racer. The commission fell to Commodore Evelyn Rix, and chance did the rest: John Hilditch, a carpenter from Belfast (Northern Ireland), happened to be visiting Buenos Aires; he grasped what these waters demanded and, back home, passed the job on to the designer Alfred Mylne.

Page from the original logbook with the commission's specifications, handwritten.

Hull lines plan signed by Alfred Mylne. A. Mylne & Co. archive.

On May 3, 1909, Hilditch raced the first two hulls in a trial regatta and then stowed them in the hold of a cargo ship on the coal route. On October 12 they were unloaded covered in soot: they were the Aurora and the Brisa, at 900 pesos each. They had been built in yellow pine with teak trim, but that wood does not withstand the estuary's damp —nor do the keels or rudders. The two pioneering hulls had to be rebuilt in cedar.

She measured 7.62 metres on deck —8.30 with the bowsprit—, 2.03 in beam and 91 centimetres of draft with the centreboard up; with Mylne's pivoting centreboard lowered, the draft climbs to 1.67 metres. The cockpit, a full three metres, was roomy for a daysailing crew; many ended up decking it over with wood or canvas to gain accommodation.

The rig was Gunter, which in local parlance became known as guayra: 33.7 square metres of cotton sail. Three were rigged that way and only one survives today. Decades later, the designer Germán J. Frers replaced it with a Bermudan rig, without a bowsprit.

Sail plan of Design No. 166, scale 3/8 inch to the foot. A. Mylne & Co. archive.

Profile plan with the waterline marked. A. Mylne & Co. archive.

The Yacht Club Argentino never made it official —the disparity between hulls undermined fair racing—, and yet the class took hold.

The Yacht Club Río de la Plata had added two more boats, the Delta and the Euro, brought from Ireland at twice the price; to stop depending on imports, it set up its own boatyard and asked José Martínez to copy the Euro —from then on he would build most of the boats in the class. The Club Náutico San Isidro did the same with the builder José Parodi. The differences between the two versions forced the creation of a measurement committee and the drafting of the Argentine Yachting Federation's first plan, commissioned from Christian Riddel.

In 1922 the Federation sent the clubs a circular: the only classes allowed to race in its regattas would be the Colleen and the Río de la Plata, so it made sense to build fleets around them. That decision gave the final push, and the clubs founded between 1896 and 1930 grew up around it.

Over the years, the class spread along the shore. The Tigre Sailing Club (Tigre, Argentina) built the Yacht Club Olivos's (Olivos, Argentina) first two at its own yard in 1929, the Cruz del Sur and the Boyero; the Olivos fleet would reach eight hulls in its first decade. The Club Náutico San Isidro added three boats it still keeps, and the Club Náutico Buchardo (San Isidro, Argentina) took in the Ibicuy and the Bermejo. On the Uruguayan side, the Yacht Club Punta del Este (Maldonado, Uruguay) ran its first regatta of the class in 1926, and the Matrero reached its waters in 1946; the Aurora and the Brisa, meanwhile, were part of the Nautilus Yachting Club fleet (Montevideo, Uruguay). Until the 1950s, it was the class that ran the most regattas on the Río de la Plata.

Boyero, from the Yacht Club Olivos, racing in the Port of Olivos, May 1930. Photo: Caras y Caretas.

Brisa, hauled out at the Yacht Club Punta del Este boatyard.

Yamandú, a restored example, at Puerto del Buceo (Montevideo, Uruguay).

In 2024, Punta del Este set out to track down every surviving hull: it brought back the Brisa and the Yamandú, and on January 10, 2026, it had them start alongside the Matrero in the Seguros Sura Regatta —something that had not happened in four decades.

The design was kept by the clubs, four generations of carpenters and people in love with it. And so, without anyone decreeing it, the sloop became a boat of the Río de la Plata. More than a century on they're still out there, and they still turn heads: for the lines, for the way they sail, for something that never quite gets named.

Acknowledgements

To David Gray, CEO of A. Mylne & Co., for the studio's archive and the plans of Design No. 166. To Martin and Bibi Cueto, for their help with this article.

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