An indelible mark
Compared with many of his peers, Doug Peterson’s career as one of the world’s greatest yacht designers was not particularly long. But it was not in the nature of the man to stand still and within that period he found success in almost every sphere, from home-built MORC racers to IOR champions to America’s Cup winners, which led to a passion for classic yacht racing… in a good classic design, that is. Even in 2025, now some 10 years after his premature passing, the influence of Peterson and his generation – really his clan – of friends and contemporaries remains powerful in the sport he loved. Former Seahorse editor Julian Everitt was an admirer of Peterson and his thinking from the very beginning…
If you had to find a single word to sum up yacht designer Douglas Peterson, it would be confidence. Here was a man with a vision and a clear path to realise it. In a way you could liken this confidence to that of a designer like Uffa Fox. But with a big difference. Where Fox was tempted with
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the radical to showcase his originality, Doug was all about creating a new ‘norm’ in ocean racing yacht design. And, boy, did he succeed. Things can have a way of coming together at the right time. Serendipitous, as it were. Level rating, boat-for-boat racing in off-
shore yachts became the ‘thing’ when in 1965 the One Ton Cup was first reprised from an inshore regatta for Six Metres into an offshore event for yachts rating equal under the RORC measurement rule. It caught the imagination of owners, boat- builders and designers immediately, but the event really took off with the introduction of the International Offshore Rule in 1970. This new rule started to create ever bigger
and heavier designs for a new One Ton rating limit of 27.5ft as the top designers of the day, Sparkman & Stephens and Dick Carter, sought longer and longer waterlines for improved performance. It seemed like the right thing to do, as these two designers had so dominated the scene since 1965. But things were about to change. Only in the third year of the new IOR, a
young Californian sailor, Doug Peterson, had seen and studied the IOR and figured that there was an opening for a lighter, smaller style of design, to take on the
so-called Jumbo One Tonners of the era. And with no client yet ready to take a punt on this unknown new talent, Peterson was also driven by another powerful influence in shaping his first stab at designing an offshore racing yacht – money, or rather lack of it. To build an effective One Tonner was
an expensive proposition and Peterson, relying on the largesse of his grandmother, had limited resources. In his attempt to take on the American yacht design estab- lishment his initial thoughts, to build a smaller, lighter competitor, would have the added advantage of being affordable. Sometimes in life decisions are shaped
by extraneous factors and Peterson was about to learn this in the decisions that helped shape Ganbare – the name he had chosen for his crack at a winning formula to take down the design establishment. Ganbare is a Japanese word that loosely translates as good luck, or as a word of encouragement to just keep on going. Well, as it happened, Doug Peterson would need a slice of good fortune very soon after the launch of his first creation. I didn’t know it at the time, but I
became a tiny part of the Peterson story when a certain other, yet to be discovered, would-be young yacht designer breezed
JONATHAN EASTLANDAJAX
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