Wianno Senior (c. 1935)
“Class A” Scratch-Built Model, 1:24 Scale, 21″ long x 21″ tall x 12″ wide
Basswood Hull, White Holly Trim, Boxwood board, Digamma spars, Brass/Nichrome steel wire rigging, Linen and Silk fiber rigging
SOLD
In 1904, the members of the Wianno Yacht Club on Cape Cod approached the Crosby Boat Works, about building a one design sloop for racing. The Boat Works had been around for more than fifty years at that point, with an impressive reputation - even better still, the club and the boatyard were located not even a half mile from each other. They asked for a boat that would eliminate any design advantages and ensure that the winner of the race would be the better sailor and not the member who had the better boat. It also had to be suited to the rather specific wind and water conditions of this area of Nantucket Sound. The Crosby Yard came up with the “Wianno Senior,” a twenty-five-foot gaff rigged sloop. It had a weighted keel and a centerboard. The Club initially ordered fourteen of the boats. They were built over the winter of 1904-1905 and delivered that Spring. The boats were a success and over the next 100 years the Crosby Yard has built over 200 of the Wianno Senior.
This model was built from plans drawn up in 1936 at the request of the Crosby Yard. Additional details, research and interviews with the Crosby descendants supplemented the information on the plans.
Tom Lauria was born in the Bronx, New York in 1952. He started building kit models when he was about seven years old and was hopelessly hooked. When he was in his early twenties, he met William Quincy, a master model builder at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Mr. Quincy patiently answered all Tom’s questions on a host of model related topics and it changed the way Tom thought about models and building them.
Shortly after, he joined the Nautical Research Guild and eagerly devoured all the information contained in their quarterly journals. Numerous trips to all the maritime museums in the northeast furthered his modeling education. He started restoring half hulls for the Larchmont Yacht Club in New York and in 1987, moved to Nantucket where model building became a fulltime job.
In 1994 Tom and his family moved to Cape Cod, where they live today. He is an active member of the U.S.S. Constitution Model Shipwright Guild. Being a Guild member has been another important step in Tom’s life. The Guild has such a wide range of members with so many varied interests and knowledge that it has proved an inexhaustible resource for anything nautical or model related.