Kismet was drawn by William Fife III and built at the family yard in Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde in 1898, a decade before the same yard turned out Tuiga and Hispania. She raced for half a century. Her last recorded regatta was in 1949, and she won it.

Then came the quiet years. Laid up, used as a houseboat, she lay in an Essex mudberth for more than fifty years. In December 2004 Richard Matthews, founder of Oyster Marine, bought what remained. Adrian Wombwell, who had already brought back the Fife Pierrette, led the restoration, and later refits at Fox's in Ipswich prepared her for the Mediterranean circuit.

She has raced as an owner helmed boat ever since. In 2018 she won the Yacht Club de France's Coupe d'Automne, the passage race from Cannes to Saint Tropez, in a fleet of nearly 130 classics. In 2022, at her third attempt, she won the Gstaad Yacht Club Centenary Trophy for yachts of a hundred years and more, ahead of Scud (1903) and Oriole (1905). This season she won it again, which makes her a two time winner of the trophy.

We never had her going so fast windward. The key moment was when we decided to change the small jib into a bigger one.

Richard Matthews, Centenary Trophy, Saint Tropez 2022