Name Kitikae

KITIKAE was built in 1924 by JW Brooke & Co. Ltd. of Lowestoft, Suffolk, designed by naval architect Rodney W. Paul of Southampton. 

She was commissioned by Sir Cecil Sidley Kay of Manchester as a gift for his wife Catherine, known as "Kiti." The name KITIKAE combines her nickname with a reference to Kay's own surname. 

Kay's commission reflected a wider trend for high-speed motorboats larger than anything built previously, driven by yacht owners competing in races or seeking tender vessels to ferry spectators to racecourses. The trend had crossed the Atlantic from America, and Kay wanted a yacht capable of navigating open sea, the English inland waterways, and the Channel. 

KITIKAE won the Thornycraft Challenge early in her career. Her maiden voyage from Lowestoft to Manchester, via the Caledonian Canal, was covered by a Yachting Monthly journalist travelling on board.

Kay owned the yacht from 1924 to 1927. In 1927 she passed to new ownership and was renamed EINANN OF GREENOCK, a name she carried for 40 years. Under this name, she sailed in the English Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, and passed through a succession of owners.

According to Royal Navy records, EINANN OF GREENOCK was requisitioned as a minesweeper during the Second World War and later modified as a fireboat. She did not take part in the Dunkirk evacuation.

In the postwar decades, EINANN OF GREENOCK had a series of owners, including one based in Guernsey who used her to visit family in Sussex and fitted her with bilge legs to allow her to sit on the sand at low tide. From 1964 to 1965, she was owned by the French journalist and Resistance figure Georges Broussine, who had founded the "Bourgogne" escape network in 1943 with Yves Allain, helping more than 300 Allied airmen return to England from occupied France.

The vessel was renamed SIRIUS in 1974, then CALYSTENE in 1976. She was renamed KITIKAE in 1995, the name she retains today.

KITIKAE retains her period interior, including marquetry work, a forward cabin, saloon, galley, and aft cabin with a Kabola central heating system and an original English wood-burning stove. In 1937, her original engine was replaced with two Gardner 6LW six-cylinder engines (53kW/74hp at 1600rpm), which remain in operation today.