evolution. It is a story often repeated in the development of successful yacht designers. Some 40 years after Dorade’s debut a
certain Doug Peterson created the One Tonner Ganbare which, being slim and small compared to the established designs of the time, more or less mirrored the revo- lutionary impact of Dorade itself. Peter- son’s success (followed by others) in 1973 against S&S designs and those of yet another untrained American naval archi- tect, Dick Carter, actually marked the beginning of the end of Olin’s unprece- dented run of success at the very top of offshore racing yacht design. Dorade was followed by the similar-
sized Stormy Weather, but the more radical departures enshrined in S&S design #07 were moderated in this follow-up design. Stormy Weather proved, however, to be every bit as competitive as Dorade, repeating the double of winning the transatlantic race and the Fastnet in 1935. Life for the Stephens brothers was both
busy and rewarding. In 1934 eight sailboat designs, plus Stormy Weather, were under construction on the eastern seaboard of the USA including a 70ft yawl – a precur- sor to what would become, after World War II, the Maxi class – a class in which S&S would have considerable success, culminating in the 79ft ketch Kialoa III which, among numerous race wins, held the Sydney to Hobart line honours record for 21 years from 1975 until 1996. Many owners of S&S designs remain
faithful, but few more so than Thomas J Watson who had five custom S&S designs dating from 1952 Design #991 through to Design #2203, spanning some 25 years. Four were sailboats called Palawan, while the fifth was a 38ft powerboat. Palawan number three – a 58-footer –
was extensively tank tested and went on to be highly successful on the racing circuit from 1966 to 1971. She was one of Olin’s first separate rudder designs and with her relatively narrow beam, opti- mised directly from the tank test data, she could be said to be a true forerunner of the breakthrough 12 Metre Intrepid. Arthur Slater had a total of six designs,
starting with a 42ft centreboard yawl called Saboo and then a string of 40ft+ racing boats aimed specifically at Admiral’s Cup competition called Prospect of Whitby. Three of these became members of British teams, in 1967, ’69 and ’71. Edward Heath, UK politician and Prime
Minister, had four Morning Clouds from S&S. Two of them made the Admiral’s Cup team in 1971 and 1973. The first Morning Cloud – a production S&S 34 – won the Sydney Hobart Race overall in 1969. Italian Marina Spaccarelli commis- sioned five One Tonners from S&S under the names Kerkyra and Paxos. All in all Olin had a total of 14 clients
who returned for multiple one-off designs as well as a host of production boatbuilders who returned time and time again for a touch of the S&S magic. And throughout all of this truly prolific output of yacht and
54 SEAHORSE
A really fast boat never stops being fast: 13 years after that first Cup win the original separate keel-and-rudder 12 Metre Intrepid – now with most crewing functions below deck – proved a very ‘uncomfortable’ trial-horse for the 1980 French Cup challengers
motorboat designs there remains the distinctive S&S ‘look’. For an architect who rarely got to draw
many of his creations, Olin maintained an iron grip on the concepts, the aesthetics and the principles of every design that ever left the office. He gave a great deal of freedom to the many architects who worked for him, including such greats as German Frers and indeed Frers Sn before him, but you always got a Sparkman & Stephens design and perhaps, more to the point, an Olin Stephens design. It is a subject of popular myth about
who actually drew any particular boat, especially if it proved successful, but the fact remains the client is essentially buying an Olin design no matter who drew it. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the
three S&S designs that made up the 1971 British Admiral’s Cup team. Morning Cloud II, regarded as supremely important to the reputation of the firm, was designed by a veritable army of talent within the office overseen by Olin, while the slightly smaller Cervantes IVwas quietly drawn by a single architect – Francis Kinney. I remember a year or so later being in
the Madison Avenue office when the story went round that the group responsible for Morning Cloud were secretly relieved that the mega man-hours poured into her con- cept had resulted in sufficient success as to survive comparison with the success of Cervantes… created by a single architect. But a big design firm like S&S can still
have quality control issues. And if ever a profession is subject to the adage that you are only as good as your last work it is racing yacht design. To stay at the very pinnacle of this
mixture of art, science and business for over 45 years, albeit it with five years lost to the global war of the 1940s, is some achieve- ment. But this success relies on more than results alone. Intel is a key ingredient and results don’t always tell the whole story. Olin and Rod both raced a lot themselves and could see first-hand how their designs were performing, but in the boom times of
the 1970s and the pace of change brought about by the IOR they increasingly farmed out this performance intelligence gathering. Having been comprehensively outper-
formed by new kid on the bloc, Doug Peterson, at the 1973 One Ton Cup, S&S changed design direction for their 1974 One Ton design America Jane II. Most notably there was a return to the more U-shaped bow sections that Olin had always favoured on his Metre boat designs and used also to particularly good effect on the second Morn- ing Cloud. That and flatter midship sections. America Jane proved to be quick on the
water – equal to a whole new generation of Doug Peterson and Ron Holland designs – but bad luck on the racecourse pushed her down the results that year. Much worse, intel from the S&S man
onboard America Jane did not reflect the true potential of the design and as a direct result of this poor performance analysis a promising new design direction was not followed up on subsequent S&S designs… Ironically as a plethora of new young
designers developed the new IOR-inspired flatter, lighter shapes, Olin had been per- suaded that the AJ shape was not the way to go. The firm’s 1975 generation of raceboats returned to deeper veed, heavier shapes and, with the exception of the 51ft Pinta, were not as successful at the Admiral’s Cup level. Perhaps in this final analysis of the Olin
and Rod design era, inspiration and intu- ition had lost out to science… In his own words, as Olin put it: ‘My own direction in yacht design has been from intuition towards computation. Neither one is alto- gether complete. You really need a combi- nation of the two. You need a feel and an eye for both.’ Finally, the word ‘balance’ aptly sums
up the Stephens brothers’ story. Again in his own words: ‘In all phases of my work I was conscious of the need for balance and I did my best to find balance in both the long and the short view. Broadly I think I can say that I applied the principles of balance in design, in business and in the pleasures I enjoyed.’
q
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126
