I was surprised to notice that I have now been a full time professional yacht designer for 29 years. For the first 17 of those I was Ron Holland’s partner and shared responsibility for over 300 designs. Together we helped redefine the modern cruising yacht.

It is an interesting time to be designing boats, to have worked with the old style and then to be able to develop concepts to take advantage of new materials, sail handling and electronic equipment. And this development still continues. The last fifteen years have also seen cruising yachts getting bigger and bigger as we develop sails and hardware to handle even greater loads.

The designs I have been involved with, either alone or in collaboration with others, cover some of the most significant large cruising yachts of our time, and all the myriad variety of sailing yacht designs I have been involved with, whether a round the world racer, a small dayboat or a multihull, every single design exercise has provided something useful, a spin-off that adds to the sum of knowledge which is an essential foundation for developing new ideas.