Based on the Alfred Mylne design ‘Panda’.
“As far as I can remember, Panda was bought by the French government, sometime after WWII (in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s) and was presented as a gift to the former king of Anam (Vietnam) Bao Dai.
After 1954, and at the end of the French war in Vietnam, Panda ended up in Toulon, with a crew from the French Navy (the skipper being Cdt Reynaud, a French Naval Officer).
I visited Panda in 1955 (?) invited by the Captain. She was then at her best, and it remains after 65 years later one of my most precious memories.” Information courtesy of Jean Louis Franceries.alfred
Memories of Rainer Hantke (project manager of the replica ‘NOELANI’): Panda’s last owners were Grace and Bill Bodle, an American couple who purchased her in 1979 for charter in the Caribbean. I knew them well because I was also in the charter business in the Lesser Antilles at that time. PANDA was one of the biggest and certainly the most impressive and most beautiful yacht in the Caribbean waters in those days. Everybody admired her and we all enjoyed seeing her passing by under sail or lying at anchor in one of the then still secluded beaches.
In 1983, after a 2-year circumnavigation, PANDA sank in the harbour of Fort-de-France / Martinique because of a fire on board while the crew (I am NOT sure if Panda had passengers aboard at that time) was ashore. She was lifted without delay and I saw the poor remnant right after that. There was nothing more than the bare steel hull, but at the stern one could still read the name ‘Panda’. Bill Bodle was desperate to restore her, so he put her in the dry-dock at Martinique in order to prepare her for towing and had her transferred to Miami. He found out that the hull was too much warped by the fire and had to give up. PANDA is now a reef off the Florida coast near Pompano (north of Fort Lauderdale).
‘Noelani’ means ‘extremely attractive outgoing Hawaiian girl’!
During 2014 she undertook further works on Americas eastern seaboard, changed flag and was renamed Naema.
2019 – The Schooner Cup at Capri
