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Dick Carter (inset) and the 3/4 Tonner Lolita – one of the fast, well-balanced and pretty Carter designs that took part in the celebration of the enigmatic American’s work in La Trinité sur Mer. The rolling curved coachroof is an immediate Carter tell for students of yacht design. When Carter’s earlier, slightly larger Rabbit won the 1965 Fastnet Race, sailed by the designer, it did so almost anonymously until approaching the finish; there was nothing visibly dramatic about the attractive new racer-cruiser… it just combined a low-drag underwater package with a perfectly proportioned rig which together delivered a sailing balance that barely shifted with heel. The editor, with experience of both yachts, likes to draw parallels with Philippe Briand’s elegant if less commodious Half Ton champion Freelance 20 years later. When Carter lost interest in the late-1970s (when performance yachts became more extreme) sailing lost a key advocate of good aesthetics in design – bad timing given some of the ‘cubist’ production yachts that were already in the pipeline
Rule 69 (damaging the sport’s image). ‘The skippers of these two boats downloaded weather files during
the race. We summoned these two racers who appeared before the jury. The documents provided prove that they did indeed download files,’ explained jury head Georges Priol. During the investigation the skipper of Capso(Tuduri) ‘admitted that he had taken a second phone onboard allowing him to benefit from an internet connection, which absolutely contravenes all the rules of the race. Following his hearing by the FFV jury Benoît Tuduri is therefore excluded from the event. Given the seriousness of the facts a report will be sent by the jury to the FFV which could lead to additional consequences for the racer.’ The case of Pierre Daniellot is a little different: due to the limited
number of files downloaded, one in England, the other in Vendée, and without finding proof that he had a phone onboard, the sanction is not as heavy. He was disqualified from stages 2 and 3, dropping from ninth to 28th overall (any person disqualified on a stage is credited with the last person’s time plus three hours). The fundamental principle of La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec is simple:
sailors fight on equal terms on one-design boats. Therefore it is the sailor who makes the difference.
Dick Carter in La Trinité At the initiative of Jimmy Pahun and Philippe Jacques-Roux, both owners of Dick Carter designs, the famous American architect was invited to La Trinité-sur-Mer for a meeting of boats bearing his sig- nature. A dozen boats, including four Carter 37s and two ‘Tinas’, arrived from France and further afield. Dick, ‘who chose naval architecture brutally unprepared for what
it involved’, says his nephew Giles, is now 95. His look has hardly changed with its light beige pants and the eternal cap screwed on the head. He does now suffer vision problems ‘but my brain continues to work well’, smiles this man whose IOR designs racked up countless major victories over a long period after his beautiful 1965 Fastnet winner Rabbit burst onto the scene. Rabbit herself continues to be kept in as-new condition by her current Italian owners, the Gandolfis,
20 SEAHORSE
who were both present in La Trinité but sadly without their boat. Carter’s brilliant career lasted until the middle of the 1970s, to
mention only his most famous racing boats. Perhaps Dick’s most renowned design was the German-owned One Ton Cup winner Tina, from which his fame grew, especially in France with Tina’s GRP production derivatives – notably Esprit de Rueil, sailed by the French Viant family, winner of so many RORC races which largely contributed to the development of this model in France. I personally had the pleasure of sailing on one of her sisterships,
Cavalier Seul, the first ‘plastic’ Tina, for my first Fastnet in 1969, then later on Naif, a Carter one-off built for Raul Gardini; Naif was always instantly recognisable by her three armchairs located at the back of the cockpit behind the two steering wheels. Then of course there was the famous, bright red Red Rooster which at the time successfully employed a lifting keel. Dick was a kind character, a discreet bon vivant, a very precise
helmsman and also an entrepreneur. I remember first meeting him with Jean-Marie Vanek at Carter Offshore, the company that distributed Carter boats of various sizes including many one-off racers. For over 10 years Carter was an essential name on any designer shortlist if you were planning a serious offshore racing campaign. At the One Ton Cup, a true level rating world championship, Tina started the victory party in 1966, trailed in the following years by Optimist, then the famous New Zealander Wai-Aniwa and to finish, Hydra, in 1973. The cruiser-racers that Carter designed were also easily recognis-
able by their elegance on the water and their excellent all-round per- formance at sea. Carter designs were very favourably regarded in France in particular so our little party in La Trinité was appropriate. During the gathering Carter himself hosted a thrilling conference
which took place in the lounge of the town hall at La Trinité-sur-Mer. Dick, who never used computers to design boats ‘because it was too expensive’, insisted during his speech on his desire to do things simply and to try hard to visualise design solutions he thought up. ‘At the time the steel hulls we started out with allowed us to dispense with worrying about structural problems. I could imagine
PHILIPPE PLISSON
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