Fastnet, Force 10, A Berth to Bermuda, For years I have said that sailboat racing is like malaria,” writes Dick Carter in his stimulating memoir. “You never get rid of it.” “ Put such a mind in a sailboat and there's no telling what will happen. called Dick the “mystery man in American yachting.”A young businessman and Yale graduate from inland New Hampshire who first sailed on a small lake, he transformed himself through a spectacular act of will into a brilliant, daring yacht racer and designer. He changed his sport, creating new types of boats and winning big races while surviving daring voyages. “Rabbit, but to enter the high-tech, cutting-edge, elite regattas run by the Royal Yacht Squadron and the Royal Ocean Racing Club, Dick Carter surprised everybody by winning the prestigious Fastnet Race. Over the next decade dominated the intensely competitive new golden age of Grand Prix yacht racing, sometimes in American waters but mostly in the windy, rough, cold English Channel and the North Sea. In Intrepid (designed by Olin Stephens, the world's most successful yacht designer) sported an important new feature that Dick had developed on his own, the trim tab. When the sailing world decided to change its design rating rules, he was so widely respected that he was appointed to the planning committee alongside Stephens.entertaining as well as inspiring and instructive. His approach was straightforward: challenge the common wisdom with a daring that he described this way:

Dick Carter: Yacht Designer In the Golden Age of Offshore Racing

Carter, Dick

Biographies & Memoirs

Seapoint Books

Not many amateur yacht designers would dare to enter the first boat they had ever designed into the epic offshore Fastnet Race, let alone with the intention of winning it. But that is what Dick Carter did in 1964, beating all 151 other yachts, some sailed by the most notable sailors of the day. He repeated the feat 4 years later with another of his own designs (which also won the Admirals Cup that year as top boat and top team), but by then he could certainly not be described as an amateur yacht designer. His radical innovations created fast and comfortable boats which were much in demand in this, the golden age of offshore racing. They were commissioned by the top sailors and succeeded in winning the Admirals Cup, Southern Cross Series, One Ton Cup, Two Ton Cup and many of the biggest races. He even went on to design the massive 128-foot Vendredi Treize for Jean-Yves Terlain to sail single-handed in the 1972 OSTAR (trans-Atlantic) race the longest boat ever to have been raced single-handed. But after just a decade at the top of his game, he quit the world of sailing and moved on to other challenges. He hadnt been heard of for so long that sailors assumed he was dead. His surprise appearance at the funeral of Ted Hood gave rise to the suggestion that he wrote this book. It is beautifully produced with many fabulous photographs and boat plans and was first published in the US by Seapoint Books and is now published in the UK by Fernhurst Books. While his career as a yacht designer may have been brief, the impact of his innovations has lasted the test of time. Who today would think of an offshore yacht without internal halyards in the mast or that the rudder always had to be fixed to the keel These concepts, and many more, were first introduced by Dick Carter.

Dick Carter: Yacht Designer: In the Golden Age of Offshore Racing

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

Fernhurst Books

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