Tyger was designed by Camper & Nicholsons Ltd and built by Hall Russell & Co Ltd for Sir Myles Wyatt, the Admiral of RORC, in 1963.
Myles Wyatt believed in the formula that a Gentleman’s yacht should have a foot on the waterline per year of his age. He had bought Bloodhound in his 40s; now, rising 60, he decided to commission a yacht for his old age.
His brief to Camper and Nicholson was that she should be in the shape of their current ocean racers and 85 feet on the waterline. His intention was to have a comfortable ship in which to make ocean passages. He did not want to employ a large crew, so he asked that the sail area should be equivalent to one reef down. She was powered by two large fishing boat engines. She was named Tyger after the dog Tyger who rescued the crew to safety when their ketch sank off Rhoscolyn in Anglesey.
George Curtis (elected RYS in 1997) was invited to join the crew for Tyger’s maiden voyage to Madeira and back in the summer of 1963. There were five in the crew for an uneventful passage, mostly under engine as she didn’t really get going under sail in less than Force 7.
A year later, Myles took her to the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway and won the Royal Cruising Club prize for his exploits.
Unfortunately, he died a short time after that and so was unable to fulfil his dream of sailing in the right sized yacht in his 80s.
Tyger was sold and after a period in the Mediterranean was, in 2015, in Nova Scotia afloat and for sale, but looking very sad.
One of the highlights of the maiden voyage was a wine tasting organised by Blandys who were persuading Myles to carry madeira aboard his fleet of aeroplanes. The crew were first given a recent vintage, and then an 1860’s vintage with the footnote that this was a pre-phylloxera wine, before all the vines had to be replaced with American stock which were resistant to the grape disease phylloxera. The final tasting was a blended wine of vintages between 1798 and 1804, the wine put down before the Battle of Trafalgar.