News Around the World
You order it and we’ll design it for you. Over the course of the first almost 50 years of Rob Humphreys Yacht Design there have been few types of vessel the Lymington-based office has not been asked for. As with nearly all of the world’s best yacht designers, the Humphreys story started with race-winners of various types, before then moving upwards – and outwards – into production designs, sail and power, and most recently the current bateau du jour, the to us pleasingly purposeful modern expedition yacht. (However, Blue Arrow (left) never did get to the America’s Cup…)
giant-felling performance by finishing 11th overall among a mass of much bigger yachts and winning IRC3 by more than 10 hours! The big event this autumn remains the Rolex Middle Sea Race
which Didier will as usual sail double-handed. For 2025 he intends to enter the Admiral’s Cup but unfortunately his very (that’s a big ‘very’ – ed) competitive boat does not meet the minimum length of 11m set by the organisers… But I think a solution may be found. Patrice Carpentier
GREAT BRITAIN 50 not out – the early years For almost half a century Rob Humphreys has continually been at the leading edge of design. You know the boats. You may be lucky enough to have raced one but almost certainly you have been beaten by one, because what consistently comes out of Humphreys Yacht Design is speed and beauty. The creator of some of the most mem- orable boats in the modern era, Rob and his son Tom, with whom he has been in partnership since 2006, are celebrating a significant milestone of a long and storied design history that started with the breakthrough and well-named 1979 Half Tonner Roller Coaster. Speaking to Rob, he says that was the moment it all started:
‘It almost didn’t happen as the build was so delayed, we ended up bringing the boat to Lymington so I could project-manage it in order to make the British trials. There clearly wasn’t going to be time to install an engine so I had to do some last-minute re-design of the rig to make the rating numbers work, and the boat launched only two days before the first race of the British trials which was the Round the Island Race. We drifted out of Lymington on a windless ebb at 3am but with a slowly building breeze made Cowes and an almost perfectly timed run across the startline. We won the race and went on to top the British Half Ton selections.’ Arguably the golden era of racing yacht design, with Lymington
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its epicentre, the mid-1980s saw Humphreys consolidate on that early success before moving up to a whole new plane. ‘That was transformative for us, it was heyday stuff. Come the 1985 One Ton Cup there were 38 boats competing, nearly all new and built specif- ically for the event. It was an amazing year and our second Jade, commissioned by Larry and Debbie Woodell, was a massive step on from their previous design from us. ‘Where their first boat was a very competitive, proper little mast-
head-rigged yacht, this time we turned up with a low freeboard dinghy with every element pushed to the absolute limit. And she had a great crew too, including Rodney Pattisson and David Howlett, while I navigated for most of the offshore races. And we won the One Ton Cup… which was an extraordinary result in then the world’s most competitive offshore fleet. ‘I look back very fondly on the old IOR days. As the only game
in town, it attracted intense international competition and repre- sented the very top end of the sport. The whole Ton Cup era was phenomenal; a defining moment for me at 16 or 17 was standing on the balcony of the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, on the periphery of a conversation between the owners of our boat and another boat, considering whom they should get to design a One Tonner – Olin Stephens or Dick Carter. More than anything this fuelled my ambitions, so I guess the One Ton Cup was always a motivating force for me.’ Further commissions followed but a changing rule landscape
meant a change in direction. ‘Much as I loved the IOR and the design opportunities it created, ultimately every rating rule has its lifespan and the IOR was no exception, ultimately going down a polarising tunnel where costs were exploding and residual values evaporating. Its early days were more about concepts and ideas, fuelled by enthusiasm more than budget. For my first design Eddie Hyde and I paid £40 to a blacksmith to weld up the core structure of the keel and Peter Sweetman and I cast profiled lead ingots to bolt onto this steelwork in his garden. ‘Ultimately my friendship with John Dare, at various times com-
modore of RORC and ORC chairman, led to conversations about what next. For those who no longer wanted to engage with the
CHRISTIAN FEVRIER
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