with his first race design, the 34ft Rabbit, to utilise a Van de Stadt-style hull and appendages package. Rabbit’s win of the 1965 Fastnet opened a floodgate to designers across the globe to universally adopt variations of the Van de Stadt rudder and keel layout for offshore boats. In an ironic twist a few years later, after
Ricus had helped Olin Stephens and Dick Carter to develop the world-purposed International Offshore Rule (IOR) in 1970, he resigned from the IOR Technical Committee in protest against the Ameri- can domination of the rule… and his belief that IOR was fostering an unseaworthy type of yacht! Ironic indeed, as it was Olin himself, back in the 1950s and early 1960s, who considered separate rudders, inspired by the Van de Stadt spade, to be unsuitable for offshore racing. In fact, the Van de Stadt office’s later
relationship with IOR was perhaps not quite as successful as the one they had enjoyed in the RORC Rule period. For sure they had some good successes in the various Ton Cup classes, but in bigger boats the continuation of their light, fair hull shapes did not fit the more tortured lines that were favoured by IOR. But this all changed in 1980 with the
advent of the Three Quarter Ton DB1. Brilliantly engineered by Cees Van Ton- geren, Ricus’s chief designer and by now son-in-law, the DB1 proved that simple, distortion-free shapes, aligned with light- ish displacement and the trademark Van de Stadt foils, could dominate during the intensely competitive mid-term of the IOR. The production design-detailing of this
aesthetically flawless 33-footer is a master- class of GRP design engineering that ele- vates it into a class of its own. It is a fitting continuation of the design skills first seen in 1958 with Pioneer. But the relentless success of this design
on the racecourse is truly staggering, with a results tally over six editions of the Three Quarter Ton Cup that reads: 1980: 2,3,5,6. 1981: 2,3,4,5,6. 1982: 2,5. 1983: 3. 1984: 1,2,3,5. 1985: 3. The eventual championship win of 1984 coming with the slightly modified DB2. With other wins all over the world, the Van de Stadt DBs have probably won
If you were wondering how long the 1961 RCOD design remained successful, well, this example, Reaction (top right), is being craned aboard a ship for the return voyage to South Africa after winning the 2013 Governor’s Cup race from Simon’s Town to St Helena, a 1,700-mile mostly downwind course that the RCOD completed in under 12 days. More than 650 GRP Van de Stadt Pioneers (above) were built in the 1960s while the DB1 3/4 Tonner (right) was one of the most successful production IOR boats of all time. Top left: Ericus Van de Stadt passed away in 1999 but his design firm continues, now led by Cees van Tongeren who engineered many of their most innovative GRP designs
more yacht races than any other single design and could arguably claim to be the greatest racing yacht design ever – cer- tainly their pedigree as a series production racer is unequalled. While Ricus retired from the design office a couple of years earlier the DB1 and DB2 assuredly carry the DNA of the Van de Stadt design ethic. There are many notable designs from
the Van de Stadt cannon. But perhaps the Royal Cape One Design best epitomises the daring approach that created a design driver that is still relentlessly pursued today, that of speed. At just under 30ft long, with a waterline length of 28ft the displacement was a mere 4,000lb, giving a displacement length ratio of 82.7! This compares pretty favourably with any go- fast offshore designs of today. Drawn in 1961, in every aspect of its design the RCOD is quite simply decades ahead of its time with its deep but short-chord bulb keel, spade rudder and rig set amidships. The most renowned development of this
class, named Black Soo, belongs firmly in yacht design folklore and is regarded by many yacht designers as inspirational. While plywood construction enabled
the Van de Stadt office to fully exploit their beliefs in light displacement, GRP gave the firm an opportunity to scale other uncharted design territory. When she was launched in 1960 the 48ft Glass Slipper was the largest production GRP offshore racing yacht in the world. This accolade was then taken by the Gallant 53 in 1966
and then by the Ocean 71 in 1970. Van de Stadt designs both. Ricus Van de Stadt completed his train-
ing as a naval architect in 1932 and in 1936 went to the Olympics as a reserve for the Netherlands sailing team. He launched his design and build business in 1933, but it really took off when Cornelis Bruynzeel commissioned the 39ft plywood Zeevalk in 1949. Business boomed in the 1950s and ’60s until the boatbuilding part was sold to Dehler. And what a success that was! They continued production of the 21ft Varianta, which began in 1962 and pro- duced a staggering 4,400 of these pocket cruisers. There are many other Dehler/Van de Stadt successes, but none come close to the iconic DB1 and DB2 IOR creations. And so, in summary, this great man of
the offshore racing yacht design world brought us lightness, fin keels and spade rudders in 1949, the astounding Maxi Stormvogel in 1960 and then, to cap it off, arguably one of the most successful IOR racers of all time, the DB1 design of 1980. Along the way his designs did as much as anyone’s to help popularise ocean racing, whether through self-build plywood boats or mass-produced GRP racers that proved the equal, in their time, to the vast major- ity of expensive and shorter lived one-offs. To date the EG Van de Stadt office has
produced over 400 designs with in excess of 25,000 boats built. A career that stands tall in an era when there was no shortage of clever and talented competition.
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