Tell Tales
Classic Boat’s address:
Jubilee House, 2 Jubilee Place, London, SW3 3TQ
[email protected]OBITUARY
Edward George Dubois
1952 -
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on Twitter and FacebookLeading naval architect Ed Dubois died suddenly in hospital on
24 March, after a period of illness and subsequent recovery in- His name is known the world over as a designer of
superyachts, but he was born in London to a non-sailing family
and his first designs were model yachts that he built to sail on
the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.
He studied the now-famous degree in naval architecture at
the Southampton College of Technology (now Southampton
Solent University) from 1971-74. Back then it was a new course,
and Dubois was in only the second intake with, among a dozen
others, Andrew Wolstenholme and Paul Gartside. Andrew
remembers him as a student who showed “flair and ambitious
ideas” even then. Ed’s first work after graduating was under Alan
Buchanan, a designer we now associate with the swansong of
British wooden yacht design. He did not stay long, setting up his
own studio in Lymington in 1977. In the late 70s, Ed was active
designing in the Ton classes, with notable boats of that period
being the quarter-tonner Borsalino Trois in 1976 and the two-ton
Admiral’s Cup yacht Police Car in 1979, the boat generally
thought to have established him.
Throughout the 1980s, he drew no fewer than 17 production
cruising yachts for the then-mighty Westerly, including the
Griffon and Fulmar, not to mention an 12-M for Peter de Savary’s
1983 America’s Cup campaign. From the late 80s onwards, he
started to draw superyachts, spearheading the new ‘super sloop’
movement (think Mirabella V et al) with Aquel II in 1987.
By the time he died, he was one of the best-known
superyacht designers in the world (power and sail), with a 58m
project in build as we went to press.
Friends, like Eddie Warden Owen of
RORC, have described him as “oozing
charisma and charm”. We will
remember him for
Firebrand, his wooden
43ft 3in (13.2m) S&S
sloop built in 1964 by
Lallows and selected for the
successful British defence of the
Admiral’s Cup the following year. Ed
raced her to class victory in the 2012
Pendennis cup. That story is up on our
website now. Ed leaves behind a wife, Honor,
and four children. Dubois Naval Architecture
and Yacht Design continues under the helm of
Peter Bolke, who has been there for 23 years.