But Ganbare had shown its superior


boat speed. She was notably quick in light airs, deliberately designed to be so to help win in the predominantly light airs of San Diego. However, in Sardinia her speed in heavy weather came as a pleasant surprise to her crew… and a genuine shock to her rivals who did not expect that light-air speed to continue up the wind range. It was clear that Peterson hadn’t invol-


untarily trashed a promising career at his first big event, by throwing away a race win, as fellow competitors and, more importantly the press, had witnessed a dev- astating exhibition of design superiority, rather than just a regatta win. Bad luck, becoming good luck perhaps,


but there was no denying in that autumn of 1973 that a new ‘kid on the block’ had arrived with a very big bang indeed, with a new concept in IOR design that would turn the established norms on their head. Out of a 24-boat fleet Ganbare had


finished second overall despite dropping to 13th from first in the points-loaded short offshore race. And ‘good’ owners had noticed. Ganbare finished first on the water in four out of the five races of the series. Throughout the 1970s, and ’80s and


even into the early ’90s, the One Ton Cup was widely regarded as the pinnacle regatta for ocean racing yachts. In the next edition after Ganbare burst onto the scene, the 1974 One Ton Cup fleet included no fewer than seven brand new Peterson designs in a fleet of 34 yachts from 14 different designers. (With his near-miss in 1973, Peterson also opened the floodgates for other new designers into the level rating world of Ton Cup racing). Boatbuilder Jeremy Rogers’ Doug


Peterson-designed Gumboots – the first of his new line of production Contessa 35s – won that ’74 event, with a total of five Peterson designs placed in the top nine. Peterson had indeed arrived with a bang


in the offshore world in an era when yacht design ideas were conceived and delivered with a rapidity that is unimaginable today. With the largest number of new designs in the fleet Peterson had come from nowhere in 12 months, to be the dominant designer of world-beating IOR yachts at the premier event for showcasing design prowess. The following year Peterson was even


more successful with Pied Piper – another variation on the Gumboots theme – taking home the trophy, now as one of seven Peterson designs in the top nine. After his initial successes in the Ton Cup


classes Doug received a positive avalanche of orders from across the globe for Admi- ral’s Cup-sized yachts; the other key event of the time and widely regarded as the unofficial world championship of offshore racing. In the 1979 Admiral’s Cup series he had over 40 boats competing for places in teams from around the world. His 43ft Moonshine was best inshore boat and sec- ond overall in the 1977 event and his little 39-footer Eclipse was top boat in 1979. Both designs were destined to become part


opportunity that remains unique to that era. And while there were now many differ-


ent interpretations of the IOR formula, not all followed the Peterson philosophy of putting windward performance at the top of the list of priorities. Indeed, there was an equally vociferous


Above: rogues’ gallery… Ron Holland and Doug Peterson celebrate one or other’s latest victory! Moonshine (opposite) was boatbuilder Jeremy Roger’s follow-up to his One Ton Cup winner Gumboots – both designed by Peterson. Here steered by Finn Gold Cup winner Chris Law, the 43ft Moonshine was the top-scoring inshore boat at the 1977 Admiral’s Cup and second top scorer overall. From Moonshine would later come the popular Contessa 43 series


of the Jeremy Rogers line of Contessas following on from the One Ton winning Contessa 35 design of 1974. One skipper who became synonymous


with Doug Peterson’s global success at this time was fellow San Diegan Dennis Conner. The Peterson/Conner and the Peterson/Rogers combinations proved to be formidable, reinforcing a fundamental belief that Peterson had confided in me soon after the start of his career: if you wanted to be a really successful boat designer you needed to team up with the best owners and the best race programmes. Hence, in another demonstration of


Doug’s confidence in his design ability, even in the early part of his blossoming career he would regularly turn down com- missions from owners he felt would not represent him well on the racecourse. As he said to me on one of the first occasions that we met, ‘A racing boat that is per- ceived to be slow, albeit due to poor race management and inexperienced crewing, will still be seen by the press as a poor design; which can very quickly have a dev- astating negative effect on your business.’ It was a measure of Doug’s ‘instant’


success, with multiple orders pouring in straight after the 1973 One Ton Cup, that he could afford to be so selective about who got to race his designs! There is little doubt that the coming


together of circumstances that helped open the door for the Peterson style of ocean racer inspired others to have a go at finding their own magic formula for success under the rapidly growing IOR system. A system, as it rather cleverly turned out, that also afforded other worthwhile avenues of development. Even before the One Ton-sized Ganbare, the combination of level-rating racing at the smaller Quarter and Half Ton sizes had started a ‘have a go’ mentality among a large cross section of young designers. It was a world of


development of design that started a revo- lution in offwind speed. There was even the odd indication, particularly in the rela- tively inexpensive, and therefore experi- mental, Quarter Ton size, that a newer concept would evolve that would see significant advances in both upwind and offwind performance. So a coming together of all the different


design philosophies was inevitable. Even Doug Peterson’s own follow-up designs, like Gumboots, winner of the 1974 One Ton Cup, started to get bigger and heavier, shades of previous IOR development from other once popular designers. So then came the gradual merging of the


Peterson pintail with the wider, fuller sterns being developed by other designers who pushed harder to exploit the offwind speed advantages that were seemingly on offer within IOR. Perhaps one of the best examples, in the ninth year of the IOR, in 1979, came with that Peterson-designed Admiral’s Cup Contessa 39 Eclipse. A typical second-generation IOR design from Peterson retaining all of the light to moder- ate upwind speed of the earlier pintail designs, but with a significant improve- ment in downwind performance. The performance of Eclipse was even


more significant as 1979 was a very windy Admiral’s Cup series, topped off by the storm-ridden Fastnet in which Eclipse fin- ished as top Admiral’s Cup boat. For one of the smallest boats in the fleet this was a major achievement and the beginning of a new trend towards lighter displacement. Doug Peterson was never a follower of


fashion, but he did realise that alternative design paths were evolving from other designers – notably Bruce Farr – that would be a real threat to his dominance. In response to the challenge it would again be in the heat of the IOR One Tonner fleet that a new Peterson concept, lighter and wider- sterned, would evolve. It proved to be a seamless transition into what might be termed a third-generation Peterson concept. There was little doubt that, with Gan-


bare, Doug led the way in creating a new direction for offshore racing boats under the IOR. And that the success of his design philosophy gave birth to a truly staggering number of his designs being built all over the world in a relatively short period of time. But how would his originality play out in other racing disciplines? It didn’t take too long to find out as he quickly became a similarly dominant force in 5.5 and 8 Metre design. Between 1993 and 1998 his designs took a total of 11 world championships in these two Metre boat classes. Clearly the Peterson star dust transi-


tioned easily from rule to rule. Part II – The America’s Cup


q SEAHORSE 49


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