Best Yacht Designer in the GRP Era

I'd like to mention Denys Rayner. Rayner was one of the pioneers who saw the possibility of using GRP to create mass produced boats which would combine good accommodation with sailing well enough to please sailors, and would be affordable compared to wooden boats. Probably not 'the best' but an early influence in the GRP era.
 
LONG_KEELER said:
Apologies - Bit tongue in cheek.

Probably could have been " Your Favourite Designer" .
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Then you get (as has already been demonstrated) just about all designers going dependent on the individuals' preferences.

By using the material to define the era then the list has to include only those who used the properties of the material to best effect, probably irrespective of the performance of the boat. So that excludes those "traditional" designers who made the transition from wood, often with little change in the actual designs, but include the pioneers of GRP who used it to create new types of boat. Some have been mentioned already such as Denis Rayner, Van de Stadt, George Hurley, Michael Dufour and would also include others such CSJ Roy and David Feltham.

However successful designers are usually capable of designing good boats in all materials.
 
Merry Girl said:
I'd like to mention Denys Rayner. Rayner was one of the pioneers who saw the possibility of using GRP to create mass produced boats which would combine good accommodation with sailing well enough to please sailors, and would be affordable compared to wooden boats. Probably not 'the best' but an early influence in the GRP era.
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Yes lots of curves in the hulls and coach roofs...... even so many designers were also 8n the early stages of grp design hence overbuilt hulls and Lloyds drop tests
 
Merry Girl said:
I'd like to mention Denys Rayner. Rayner was one of the pioneers who saw the possibility of using GRP to create mass produced boats which would combine good accommodation with sailing well enough to please sailors, and would be affordable compared to wooden boats. Probably not 'the best' but an early influence in the GRP era.
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Merry Girl,

was it he who gave us the delightful Buckler 24 ?

It's OK, I've decided we need more eccentrics; in fact I quite fancy one with cannon ports...:)
 
No, I said Denys Rayner was probably not the best designer of the GRP era, and that's because he wasn't the man who gave us the Buckler. Clearly the best designer of the GRP era was the man who did - take a bow, Bob Mayo!
 
On the basis that the fundamental job of a yacht designer is to design yachts that people will buy, it would be hard to beat Roger MacGregor. While in business he sold 38,000 yachts, and although I can't find how many of these were the MacGregor 26, I suspect that they outsold the next biggest seller (Catalina 27?) by a factor of ten or so.

Lines, handling and performance are all very well, but if a yacht doesn't sell the designer has failed. GT35, anyone?
 
For cruising boats Bob Perry takes some beating. Good turn of speed and easy on the eye. Not so common in the UK but well known every where else. Valliant 40, Tayana 37, of which there are more of them out there cruising than any other boat.

For racing ones, Bruce Farr. Everything from 18' skiffs through to America's Cup Class via ocean racers.
 
JumbleDuck said:
Lines, handling and performance are all very well, but if a yacht doesn't sell the designer has failed. GT35, anyone?
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How true.

Would love to know how boats actually come to fruition from the designers board.

Have some boats come into being from a designer selling the idea to a manufacturer ?

And how many manufacturers give a brief to a designer after finding a gap in the market ?

Also, how much of a fight is it for a designer to hang on to his dream ?

Does a designer sometimes take a cut of every unit sold as opposed to just a design job ?
Jack Holt comes to mind with the Mirror.

There are some nice books around like "The Folkboat Story " which was actually designed by a committee although there was lots of of other stuff going on.
 
JumbleDuck said:
On the basis that the fundamental job of a yacht designer is to design yachts that people will buy, it would be hard to beat Roger MacGregor. While in business he sold 38,000 yachts, and although I can't find how many of these were the MacGregor 26, I suspect that they outsold the next biggest seller (Catalina 27?) by a factor of ten or so.

Lines, handling and performance are all very well, but if a yacht doesn't sell the designer has failed. GT35, anyone?
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That's like saying the Bubonic Plague was highly successful as there was a lot of it about; and yes I'm wondering which is worse. :)
 
Seajet said:
That's like saying the Bubonic Plague was highly successful as there was a lot of it about; and yes I'm wondering which is worse. :)
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The whole notion of "success" in diseases is an interesting one. The common cold is very successful, because it doesn't kill people and it doesn't disable them enough to stop them spreading it. Ebola is not successful because by and large it kills people far to quickly to spread far. Bubonic plague hit an intermediate sweet spot, because it incubates for 2 - 6 days, giving lots of time for onward transmission before killing you.

Back to yachts, you may not like the MacGregor 26, but no-one can deny that someone who sells 38,000 of his own designs is a pretty damn successful yacht designer.
 
LONG_KEELER said:
And how many manufacturers give a brief to a designer after finding a gap in the market ?
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The GT35 seems to have been commissioned on the basis of a common opinion here: that if only manufacturers produced 1990s-style boats again the world would queue up to pay huge prices for them them ...

myth-busted.gif
 
There are interesting books by Test Pilots - who reported their findings to designers, who either took their advice and made modifications or chose not to; and the different approaches transfer very well to Yachts.

One chap whose autobiography I have just read, think I'll skip his name but he was involved with early Vulcans and later with BAe, had the attitude

' Just make the thing so it scrapes through the Ministry requirements, anything more would be a waste of time & money '.

The Waterton / Farley approach was

' Lets make the thing as good as we possibly can, for the sake of less skilled future service pilots and for the company to sell the thing internationally '.

I'll leave you to judge...
 
LONG_KEELER said:
How true.

Would love to know how boats actually come to fruition from the designers board.

Have some boats come into being from a designer selling the idea to a manufacturer ?

And how many manufacturers give a brief to a designer after finding a gap in the market ?

Also, how much of a fight is it for a designer to hang on to his dream ?

Does a designer sometimes take a cut of every unit sold as opposed to just a design job ?
Jack Holt comes to mind with the Mirror.

There are some nice books around like "The Folkboat Story " which was actually designed by a committee although there was lots of of other stuff going on.
Click to expand...

All of those!

Interesting article on Ed Dubois in this month's PBO which should answer most of your questions about the life of a successful designer, including his 1% sales value royalty on all the Westerlys he designed.

The big design houses now such as Farr, J&J, J&V offer almost one stop shops for volume builders starting from a brief from the client to producing designs, engineering, approval, prototype and production tooling, all aided by computers and computerised machinery.

At the other end of the spectrum, Stephen Jones is well known for working using traditional methods, much like designers in the past.

Racing still has a big influence on many designers both as a way of getting lucrative commissions and developing design ideas that might translate into production cruising boats.
 
Sparkman & Stephens- some really classic & fast, designed with excellent sea keeping qualities - which has to be a prime item in design
Ron Holland- small boats to start with but moved on to some really excellent large boats
Bruce Farr- way out racers

But If I could afford a new one off it would be Stephen Jones

Interesting how Jones has turned up the most in this thread. He is a designer who has designed some way out racers such as Tumblehome & less radical fast boats such as the Hustlers, yet has designed some really clever cruising boats. There is a brilliant one off at Bradwell ( forget the name) that looks like an old classic but beneath the waterline is a really interesting well balanced shape with a wide stern that is not obvious to the casual observer. The owner says she can sail herself with very little input from the helm & is quick
 
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