After the halcyon days of match racing in the early 20th century, yachting in Australia reached a depressing impasse after World War I. An entire generation of yachtsmen had been killed in action, and the nation’s yachting fleets from before 1914 had been laid up. Most yachts had been out of the water for extended periods and needed major repairs to get them going again. Many were also now a decade out of date as far as rating rules were concerned and still carried huge, lumbering jackyard-topsail gaff-cutter rigs that needed entire football teams to sail them.