Professional BoatBuilder - December-January 2018

16 PROFESSIONAL BOATBUILDER

ROVINGS

COURTESY APV ENGINEERED COATINGS

Doug Peterson:

1945–2017

Yacht designer Doug Peterson’s name was far more o en

associated with winning races than losing. He worked on

several successful America’s Cup campaigns, so it is ironic

that the day he died from cancer, at age 71, the Kiwis again

wrested the Cup from Larry Ellison’s American team. Peter-

son was on Team New Zealand in 1995, when its Black

Magic beat Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes.

Peterson apprenticed with West Coast designer Wendell

“Skip” Calkins, where he learned about lightweight, low-

resistance hullforms that excel in downwind races like the

Transpac. He was largely self-taught, which might explain

why he always seemed to buck convention. Working on his

own, he designed the 34' (10.4m) Ganbare and built it with

money borrowed from his grandmother. Ganbare won the

One Ton North American Championships in 1973 and then

was transported to Italy for the One Ton World Champion-

ships, where an error rounding a mark relegated her to sec-

ond place. He was regarded as one of the top racing-yacht

designers, if not the top, during the 1970s and ’80s; his boats

tallied eight world championships, including victories in the

Southern Ocean Racing Conference and Admiral’s Cup

when the IOR was the dominant rule.

Alan Andrews (see “By the Rules,” PBB No. 154), a fellow

West Coast yacht designer, worked for Peterson one sum-

mer and remembers his boss’s fast pace of designing between

regattas. In a statement for the sailing press, Andrews said,

“Doug did the bulk of the hull lines, keels, set the sail plan

dimensions and design concepts, but there was always much

more to get these concepts into drawings [before] they could

be sent to the clients and builders.”

The cushions on this boat have been treated with APV’s Vynguard

Weldable PVDF (polyvinylidene  uoride) to seal and protect the vinyl

from ultraviolet rays, and from Streptoverticillium reticulum bacteria.

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