1934 Starling Burgess 35
Price
$109,000
Length
35 ft
Builder
Starling Burgess
Little Dipper
1934, Starling Burgess Cutter, 41’ LOA
Little Dipper is a 41’ LOA Starling Burgess cutter built by Joel Johnson in
Bridgeport, CT in 1934. With her relatively plumb bow, slack bilges and sweeping
sheer Little Dipper could easily be mistaken for a 19th century English cutter
but her dynamic hull shape, beautifully tapered ballast keel, high
ballast-displacement ratio and Bermudan rig identify her as a thoroughly modern,
forward thinking 1930s yacht.
She was drawn at the height of Burgess’s career, during the downtime between the
design of successful J-class America’s cup defenders Enterprise (1930) and
Rainbow (1934). Burgess likely foresaw the eventual end of the big Universal
Rule race boats on which he’d built his reputation and was already doing his
homework, working on moderately sized, blue-water capable, cruiser-racers, when
he was asked to draw Little Dipper.
The commission came from Buckminster Fuller, an eccentric 1930s futurist author,
architect, designer, and inventor. The story goes that she was part of a ploy to
get Burgess, one of the most talented aeronautical engineers of the era, to work
on his revolutionary, aerodynamic Dymaxion concept car. Ploy or not Little
Dipper was built and her owner and designer’s fascination with aeronautics is
fully evident on close inspection.
Fuller’s ploy worked and Burgess went to work for the Dymaxion corporation in
1932. A boatbuilder named Joel Johnson began construction on Little Dipper in
1933 under Burgess’s supervision and at the very same Bridgeport, CT factory
where the Dymaxion car was being developed.
Her construction was interrupted for a time, presumably because Burgess ran off
with and eventually married the Dymaxion project patron Nannie Dale Biddle, much
to Fuller’s chagrin. Little Dipper was eventually moved to City Island, finished
off, fitted with an Alden designed rig and launched in 1934.
Fuller sailed her for a few years then sold her in 1936 to Elihu Root, a member
of the America’s cup J-class Enterprise syndicate and patron of Burgess’s. She
was later owned a man named Richard Baum who sailed Little Dipper extensively
(engineless and mostly singlehanded) between New England and the Caribbean and
documented it in his book By the Wind. As Llewelyn Howland noted in his
biography of Starling Buress, for Baum, Little Dipper proved herself to be an
almost perfect vehicle for fast, safe, handy and comfortable sailing and passage
making.”
Little Dipper’s current owner found her languishing in Liberty, NJ in 2006,
purchased her and brought her north to Brooklin, ME where she underwent a
significant refit in ’09-’10 with the help of Eric Dow’s Boat Shop (see Refit
Notes at the end of this listing description). She has cruised the Maine coast
and been stored at Billings Marine in Stonington, ME ever since.
Little Dipper is a rare package for yacht of her vintage: stately, pedigree,
exceptionally beautiful, but still comfortable, fast, seaworthy, and easily
handled. She is offered for sale in excellent structural and aesthetic condition
following an ’09-’10 refit with a new interior, a recently reconditioned Yanmar
from Billings Diesel (2012), and a beautiful new set of Gambell and Hunter
sails. A 2021 survey is available on request.
Cay Marine Group is pleased to assist you in the purchase of this vessel. This
boat is centrally listed by Brooklin Boat Yard. It is offered as a convenience
by this broker/dealer to its clients and is not intended to convey direct
representation of a particular vessel
Vessel Year:
1934
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