Yachtie Matt Allen takes put and call option over Sir William Tyree's Darling Point harbourfront

Yachtie Matt Allen, a veteran of more than 20 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Races. has taken a put and call option over Sir William Tyree"s Darling Point harbourfront.

One of Sydney Harbour’s longest property owners, Sir William Tyree, the founder of a 1940s electrical transformer manufacturing company, has given Allen the rights to buy his Darling Point harbourfront residence which comes with unenviable waterfront facilities.

The deal was done last month, presumably at well short of its ambitious $50 million hopes on its initial listing. Matt Allen's most famous Sydney to Hobart skippering has been of Ichi Ban, which has variously been a Sydney 38 OD, a Farr 40 OD and a Jones 70 ocean racer. He is the former Cruising Yacht Club of Australia commodore.

Sir William - who briefly dabbled in fm radio licences in the late 1970s - was knighted in 1971 for philanthropic services.

In the early 1990s Sir William successfully resisted attempts by Woollahra Council to turn his foreshore land, which has unrivalled boating facilities, into a harbourfront open space linking to nearby McKell Park.

Sir William engaged three agents, Bill Bridges of Ballard Property, Ken Jacobs of Christies International and Michael Dunn from Richardson & Wrench to find its buyer in August 2011.

Its an 1,800-square-metre Lindsay Avenue property at the tip of Darling Point and next door to Glanworth, owned by the media tycoon Kerry Stokes, who everyone throught might be the likely buyer, if not the other neighbour, Stan Howard.

Sir William bought it in 1967 for $170,000 from the estate of Margaret Wirth of the Wirth Circus family.

It was listed with $40 million to $50 million hopes in 2011. And as Property Observer noted on its listing, the price may have been achievable two to three year earlier, but not then and not now.

No sale price is yet available. Nor the specifics as to the option. But Title Tattle presumes it fetched around $30 million, and more likely on the high side.

It was 1996 when the  Potter Warburg executive Matt Allen spent $5.65 million sale to buy the Yoorami Estate in Bellevue Hill from the barrister Geraldine Vandeleur, wife of silk Charles Sweeney.