Left top: enjoying a reunion of Petterson’s Sverige 12 Metre crew in Newport, RI and (below) with Swedish tennis star Björn Borg. Petterson’s elegant sports coupé for Volvo (above) was followed soon afterwards by the groundbreaking Maxi 77 (top). Right: tiller-steering the 12 Metre Sverige with the rest of the crew working below deck
decline, but there are signs that things will soon improve again. The world economy is beginning to improve, and that means a lot in our line of business. I guess it’s always been like that. As you know, I started working with boats a long time ago –I have seen how things can go up and down…’
Half a year’s salary
Today a relatively ordinary medium-sized family boat will cost roughly £100,000 when bought new. That is at least two or three years of income for most ordinary people. But what did that picture look like in 1970? How much did people typically invest in a boat?
Petterson needs to think about it: ‘Well, back then a Maxi 77 would have cost about £3,000. I can’t really remember the average income at the time, but I would imagine it was about £6,000. I should think it was possible to buy a new Maxi 77 for something like half a year’s normal salary. But I have to note some caution in that calculation, I can’t remember the exact numbers.
‘However you dress it up, as a proportion of income today’s boats are much, much more expensive than they were back then when the sport was still growing so fast…’
Star – the finest boat ever When he looks back, what would he call his favourite boat? Petterson looks down on the asphalt, it’s a long way back… ‘The Star was the boat that came closest to my heart,’ he says. ‘I learned a lot, also as a designer, to work with lines, and to handle tolerances.
‘I won the world championship in a boat that I designed myself. The gold and silver boats in the 1972 Olympics were
mine too – plastic boats I had designed and which were then built in Switzerland. Later I got involved in the America’s Cup and we had to work more scientifically, with tank testing and so on. I divided my time between designing boats for serial production – boats that could generate income – and the much more advanced racing boats where the point simply was to make them as fast as possible.’
Could Pelle highlight some specific models, boats he feels came out just right? ‘The first that comes to mind,’ he says, ‘are the 6 Metres that I designed and built. They won almost every world champion - ship… well, almost every race they did over a long period of time. And then there is my love for the Star, the tool for racing I still admire more than anything else. It has everything, trim options, feeling, it’s like a Stradivarius on the water.
‘But I also have to mention the Maxi 77 – the “milk cow” that made it possible for me to truly develop my racing… by gener- ating the means that I needed to compete.’
Sweden as a world leader If asked how he would define his own influences, and where he has had the biggest impact – what would he say? ‘Well… it would probably be putting the Maxi 77 on the market. That gave a very large number of people the opportunity to get in touch with the ocean, family sailing, cruising. We created a boom in the 1970s, and that was a unique thing in Sweden, or rather in Scandinavia as a whole. ‘We were the biggest in the world in terms of family boats, not just the Maxi 77, but also the Albin Vega and many others. We really produced a lot of boats. People came from France and England,
Who is Pelle Petterson? Swedish sailor and yacht designer, born 1932. Still active at the age of 82, Petterson can look back at a career where more than 85,000 boats have been built to his designs. Petterson started Maxi, the world’s biggest producer of sailing boats during the 1970s, and has received numerous awards, not only for his achievement as a designer and business man, but also as an athlete. Petterson won bronze and silver medals at the Olympic Games in 1964 and 1972, skippered two America’s Cup teams in 1977 and 1980, and won a world championship in the Star – in a boat that he designed himself. As an industrial designer Pelle Petterson was the first man to introduce and implement true serial production in GRP boatbuilding.
and they were impressed by the series of boats we built here in Sweden.
‘Yes, we were world leaders, both in development and volume. Later on the downside made itself felt: it became increasingly expensive to produce boats in Sweden. High wages, high production costs. To compete with Slovenia, France, Germany and so on… it didn’t work out in the long term. At that point it was not an option to move the production out of Sweden. But later more and more of our original production has been moving out, typically to Poland and the Baltic region.’
Things have changed
We look over at the Hallberg Rassy production facilities on the other side of the harbour. The boats that are being finished inside are no longer available for half a year’s salary… not even close. Today it’s more like five or even 10 average yearly salaries. Things have changed. So maybe it’s not so strange that now the boat industry finds it hard to sell boats in large enough numbers. We shake hands, and Pelle smiles, his eyes narrow against the low sun. Pelle P puts his sunglasses on. He has to move on, there is a new model to present tomorrow. ‘And, yes,’ he laughs – ‘it’s going to be built in Poland.’
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