Launched in 1935 on City Island, New York, Sonny was born into a remarkable moment in American yacht design. She was the ninety-fourth design from the then-young firm of Sparkman & Stephens, conceived in the wake of Olin and Rod Stephens’s breakthrough yachts Dorade and Stormy Weather. In those years, the Stephens brothers were refining a new type of ocean-going yacht—moderate in displacement, balanced in line, and as capable of crossing oceans as of winning races. Sonny was the embodiment of this philosophy: elegant, strong, and built to endure.

Her promise was evident from the very beginning. Within a year of her launch, Sonny lined up for the 1936 Miami–Nassau Race, where she secured second place in her class, a performance that confirmed her reliability offshore. Two years later she was back, again proving her pedigree against the best of her generation, including her near-sister Stormy Weather. Other races followed—the St. Petersburg–Havana, the Newport–Bermuda—each one adding to a growing reputation for seaworthiness and grace.

In 1937, ownership passed to Colonel Albert E. Peirce, a Virginia yachtsman with a passion for Sparkman & Stephens craft. Under his stewardship, and later renamed Gladja, the yacht found herself pressed into service during the Second World War. As part of the US Coast Guard Auxiliary’s “Corsair Fleet,” she served on patrol, and it was during this period that she endured her most dramatic chapter: a collision with a submarine off Nassau that left her sunk. Raised, repaired, and returned to service, she survived both the war and the uncertain years that followed, when many classic yachts were lost to neglect.

That Sonny endured at all is a testament to the care of successive owners who recognised her worth. By the turn of the twenty-first century, she was ready for a new chapter. A series of major restorations began in Italy in 2001, where her stem, keel, and deck were renewed, followed by further structural work in the United States. Between 2007 and 2012 her hull was reframed with laminated oak, her steering gear rebuilt, and a bronze mast truss installed to carry the loads of her rig. Later came a re-caulking of her decks, a rebuilt galley, new electrical systems, and, most recently, the installation of a modern Yanmar diesel engine.

Few yachts of her era can claim such meticulous care. Sonny’s maintenance records are exhaustive, her restorations painstakingly faithful. Today, nearly ninety years after she first touched the water, she remains what she has always been: a living testament to the genius of Sparkman & Stephens in their golden age. To sail aboard her is to experience not only the poise of a fine yacht, but the continuity of history—a line unbroken from the days when Uffa Fox could write of her type that it “gladdens the hearts of those who go down to the sea in such small ships.”