News Around the World
Since acquiring her sturdy Robert Hicks-designed 50-footer Lisa Blair has clocked up more than 60,000nm in her efforts to take the climate action message to every corner of the Southern Hemisphere. Lisa is particularly fond of circumnavigating islands, inevitably solo, whether the island be something modest like New Zealand or something bigger like Antarctica which she successfully rounded in 92 days at her second attempt. On her first attempt Lisa was dismasted after 72 days at sea, not the greatest place to lose your rig
rarefied closing days of the IOR, it was left to the CHS (now IRC) and IMS systems to create a platform. ‘For us the result was Apriori, designed to shake away the
measurement-point distortions of the IOR and point the way towards a sweeter and more seamanlike set of lines. The cold-moulded design was built by Neville Hutton, as were many of my earlier designs; she is still owned by John after nearly 30 years of continuous use. ‘But then the road forked in an unfortunate way, and it was a huge
shame when at that point RORC/UNCL and ORC went their separate ways with their offerings for the cruiser/racer world, one with IRC while ORC opted first for IMS then the derivative ORC system they use today. That split has proved a great disservice to sailing.’ One of Rob’s more memorable designs was the IOR Maxi
Rothmans, built for the 1989/1990 Whitbread Round the World Race. ‘The Whitbread had been going for a while and Rothmans was something of an extension of a Jade-type machine. ‘Every designer around then saw the Whitbread as a pinnacle
project, but at that time Bruce Farr had established dominant credentials. Like many other designers we always had a fledgling project on the drawing board and because the Rothmans board wanted to go about it their own way we were invited to present our ideas to them. The result was a short gestation period and our fairly immediate selection of Lawrie Smith as skipper.’ At about the same time the mercurial Peter de Savary was circling
the America’s Cup and Rob was again drafted in with a specific set of requirements. ‘Peter’s Blue Arrow America’s Cup project ran over the same period, with a design team comprising myself, Ed Dubois, Tony Castro and later Jo Richards and Phil Morrison. It was the time of the Kiwi Big Boat v Catamaran challenge. ‘Anyway, de Savary found the cash and the project got underway
with a team set up in his Pendennis Shipyard. The boat truly was designed and built in 11 weeks, initially using the wingmast and sails from Ed’s Formula 40 trimaran Full Pelt as a bit of a shortcut. ‘Obviously we were pretty secretive about our boat and what I
most remember of a pretty short meeting with Bruce Farr was Russell’s [Bowler] exasperated observation: ‘It’s a trick boat! It’s
30 SEAHORSE
a trick boat, isn’t it?’ Hard to say no with a straight face… ultimately the best way to put it is that we were politely turned away by the Kiwi challengers! ‘For us it was a time of great variety, and the end of the 1990s
saw us working on other diverse projects ranging at one end from Sir Chay Blyth’s Global Challenge 72s, to Ellen MacArthur’s Imoca 60 Kingfisher which we designed in collaboration with Owen Clark, us carrying out the naval architecture and exterior design.’ Alongside the out-and-out racers Humphreys Yacht Design has
been responsible for a constantly growing line of successful and often unusually good-looking production products including designs for Elan, Sigma, Southerly, MG, Contessa, Oyster plus latterly increas- ing activity in the explorer, commercial and superyacht sectors. Innovation, design aesthetics, speed and useability – Humphreys
Yacht Design is still delivering 50 years later. Roller Coaster indeed. Magnus Wheatley
NEW ZEALAND Australian solo sailor Lisa Blair has completed a busy summer in New Zealand, sailing another 5,000 miles or so and setting new records as part of her global mission to knock off big challenges while campaigning for small everyday actions to mitigate climate change. Like millions of others, she was initially overwhelmed by the enormity
of what she saw in today’s environmental challenges, but she refused to let the scale of those challenges paralyse her into inaction. Instead, she set out to undertake a formidable series of solo
sailing challenges as a standard-bearer for making individual, step- by-step domestic changes. ‘If we can mobilise millions of people to just change commonplace daily behaviours, then we can create a better future,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t have to be huge. It certainly doesn’t have to be super high-profile. Just do something.’ So her Kiwi summer added more records to an impressive list
of sailing achievements, which include two solo circumnavigations of Antarctica. Sandwiched between the two Antarctic voyages, she also completed a 58-day 6,500-mile round-Australia voyage in 2018, setting two new records on the way.
CORINNA RIDGEWAY
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