O
ne of my favorite stomps as a kid
was the old boatyards down by
the port in San Pedro, California.
I had a fascination with hull design even
at that age, so I cruised these yards look-
ing at the undersides of boats blocked for
storage. I learned a lot about hull design
this way, and ran across some very curious
boats at times.
Wandering through a yard in San Pe-
dro one day in 1972, I came across a
mothballed off shore race boat unlike
anything I had ever seen. Th is boat had
a single shaft sticking out several feet be-
hind its deep-V hull and on top of its tu-
bular stainless steel rudder extension sat
the driver’s seat and throttles. Th e hull
itself was about 28 feet long, but its bow
had another tubular structure running
well forward of the bow that supported
an arrow-sharp hull extension. It was a mystifying contraption
by any measure, and I hadn’t a clue what it was.
A year or two later I was reading an article in Rudder magazine
about the newly launched, super futuristic Riva 2000, designed
by Renalto “Sonny” Levi. Th e boat sported a “delta” deep-V hull
and three fi xed-shaft surface drives. All of this was new and
exciting to me, so I headed for the downtown library and found
a single copy of Levi’s book Dhows to Deltas. My world opened
up with this book and I began my own design career with it as
my bible to powerboat design.
As I began to read Levi’s book, I ran across a race boat he designed
for the land-speed record holder, Craig Breedlove. It was a classic
Levi delta design that aft er some testing and racing, was modifi ed to
seat the driver aft of the transom for a better ride and a bow exten-
sion to improve its rough-water running. I realized this had to be the
boat I had discovered sitting in storage in the San Pedro boatyard a
couple of years before. Knowing the signifi cance of what I found, I
drove back to the port to take another look, but it was gone.
In 1982 I moved to Sarasota to establish my own design studio,
referencing my Xeroxed copy of Dhows To Deltas many times.I had only ever seen one of Levi’s boats
in person, but I was well versed in what
a delta looked like. One day I was driving
south on the main highway and I came up
behind a boat being towed. I knew there
weren’t many deltas in this country, but
this boat had to be one, so I followed the
guy to his house. I jumped out behind him
and asked, “Is that a delta?”
The young man answered, “Yeah, my
father used to own a boatyard in San Pe-
dro and I towed it to Florida.” The bow
and stern tubular extensions had been
removed, but it was the same boat I had
lost track of years before. A full decade
and almost 3,000 miles later, the mysteri-
ous Levi “Delta 28 with Ram” had ended
up in my new hometown. What were the
odds of that?
In 1994, we were visiting the build of the
117-foot motoryacht Lady Tiff any in Portsmouth, England, and
my wife and I decided to take a side trip to the Isle of Wight. I
knew Sonny Levi had retired and lived on the island outside of
Cowes, so on our last day we gave him a ring.
He had us up to his house and I had great fun relating the
amazing story of his long-lost race boat. I also told him I had
a tattered Xerox copy of his book that I had cherished for
years. He grabbed a second edition copy of Dhows To Deltas
from the shelf and autographed it for me along with his new
book Milestones In My Designs. He and his wife drove us back
to Cowes and asked us to join them for lunch at the Royal
London Yacht Club.
As we walked up the steps to the club, we were stopped by
a trio of gentlemen, one of whom was the club commodore.
Asked if he was a member, Levi introduced himself to the quite
astonished commodore. Perhaps one of its most famous mem-
bers, he had never actually been to the club and nobody had
ever met him. Sonny Levi, Royal Designer for Industry and fa-
ther of modern powerboat design died in November 2016 at age- I am honored to have met him. U
20 POWER & MOTORYACHT / JUNE 2017 WWW.PMYMAG.COM
SIGHTLINES
BY MICHAEL PETERSThe Father of Modern Powerboat Design
HOW CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH SONNY LEVI LEFT A LASTING IMPRESSION.
LEVIBOATS.COMRenalto “Sonny” Levi revolutionized boat design.