Update
Definitely a man who enjoyed his work, Ed Dubois in his elegant New Forest offices. As well as being a fine designer, Ed was of course the ultimate front-of-house, working the dock hard at every major event in pursuit of new business, very often with success. Dubois offered owners the full package: a distinctive cruising yacht, a race programme with good crew on tap or, as important, a way into superyacht regattas which included that guaranteed – exhausting – social schedule at which he excelled
ED DUBOIS
Where the IOR generated sometimes awkward and ugly boats, Ed Dubois managed to make his sumptuous and shapely. This gift for drawing fine lines allowed him to become one of the most successful and influential yacht designers of the past 30 years. John Taggart’s Quarter Tonner Enigma, Richard Riggs’ Half Tonner Santa Evita, Peter Cantwell’s trailblazing 1979 Admiral’s Cupper Police Car all had something about them: fast and handsome. Dubois’ first boat was commissioned by Jersey-based restaurateur George Skelley whom he met during a summer internship with designer Alan Buchanan. Borsalino Troisowed much to a study project Dubois had carried out while on the Yacht Design Course that John Moon had just launched at the Southampton College of Technology, a course that hot-housed a couple of generations of key marine industry figures.
Instead of a normal run aft in the hull profile of his study yacht, Dubois inverted it with a pronounced hook between the two aft girth stations. The profile became convex instead of concave. The algorithm within the IOR liked what it thought it saw, with the Rated Length calculated at much less than the actual sailing length. He built a tank model and tested the design against a contem- porary Alan Buchanan-designed Three Quarter Tonner. It was of course very fast by virtue of its extra length. But while perhaps imaginative, Dubois decided that to build such a boat would not be a good thing. Exploiting loopholes in the rules might get him noticed, but not necessarily admired. Dubois moderated his manipulation of the IOR rule when Skelley decided to make a step up from his She 31. Skelley and Dubois had shared good times racing the She cross-Channel and cruising round the Channel Islands. When Dubois, 22, left for the mainland after a couple of summers in Jersey, he wrote: ‘Farewell. I’d really like to design you a boat one day.’ Skelley responded, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got the message…’
Dubois had wanted to head to New York, 55 Madison Avenue and the Sparkman & Stephens office. There was no more revered a place in yacht design at the time, and Olin and Rod’s firm was a finishing school dubbed ‘The S&S University’ for the alumni it produced. Delays with an immigration Green Card saw Dubois succeed Rob Humphreys as offshore correspondent for the English Yachts&Yachtingmagazine instead, dividing his time between the magazine’s Southend office and the Hamble.
8 SEAHORSE
Dubois also knew that a designer’s reputation could succeed
or fail on how well a boat was sailed. The magazine’s then editor Peter Cook introduced him to Olympic sailor John Oakeley and this got him rides in the 1975 Solent Points and RORC Championships. Having got to know Dubois, Oakeley understood the younger man’s overwhelming desire to create racing yachts of his own rather than write about the efforts of others. When he offered Dubois the chance to add a yacht design office to his Miller & Whitworth sailmaking business, Dubois jumped at it.
‘Suddenly I saw the way through to getting my first break,’ recalled Dubois. ‘I remember how driven I was, how much I wanted to be a fully fledged yacht designer.’ He now had the chance: George Skelley had been as good as
his word in giving Dubois his first racing boat to design; by bringing this first commission to Miller & Whitworth he would combine John Oakeley’s sailing skills with Skelley’s Jersey crew. Borsalino Trois was the result.
Dubois was astute enough to know that Borsalino Trois must be a winner on merit, not because of a clever wheeze over her handicap rating, so he drew a more wholesome boat than his college concept. Even so, she featured a very high prismatic hull form with an elongated V-eed stern. But, boy, did she lap up the light winds of the summer of 1976, winning the British Three Quarter Ton Cup trials, the RORC Class IV title and the Solent Points championship. Ed Dubois had arrived.
Commissions followed from Switzerland’s Jürg Christen, for another Three Quarter Tonner Nadia, and from Northern Ireland’s John Taggart for the Quarter Tonner Enigma, each marking Dubois out as a designer of exquisitely good-looking boats. A fortuitous connection with Hong Kong through English lawyer Bill Turnbull allowed Dubois to jump from the smaller Ton Cup sizes straight to bigger boats raced in the likes of the Admiral’s Cup, SORC and Southern Cross – a scene that was dominated in the late 1970s by the trio of Ron Holland, Doug Peterson and German Frers. Bob Miller had yet to change his name to Ben Lexcen (and go on to win the 1983 America’s Cup) and Turnbull owned the Miller- designed Ceil III. Running the UK offshoot of the Miller & Whitworth sail loft was, of course, John Oakeley. When Turnbull launched the bigger Miller-design Ceil IV, Oakeley and Dubois were in her crew for the 1975 Hong Kong Admiral’s Cup team. So too was shipbroker Esben Poulsson; the 27-year-old Dane counted Hong Kong ship
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