June 26, 2017-Doug Peterson

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Doug Peterson

The world of yachting lost a great designer when, after a long battle with cancer, Doug Peterson died in a San Diego Hospital on June 26, 2017.

We only knew Doug slightly, but we consider him to have been a great friend of ours; after all Doug Peterson designed Wings, this lovely boat of ours, so we have a connection with him. And now he is gone.

For giving us Wings we owe Doug Peterson a lot, and we will miss him.

Doug was a boat nut. He grew up in Los Angeles and moved to San Diego as a teen-ager and was often found hanging around the San Diego Yacht Club. Members there remember a scruffy young man who really liked boats. He stated in an interview: "I started putting boats down on paper when I was 10, and have never wanted to do anything else." "My father is an aerospace engineer, and he taught me a lot from the beginning about design," Peterson said. "I was the kind of kid who used to crawl around boat yards looking at things. I was the one always looking over the side of a boat at the wake."

Doug sailed a lot and as young man decided to make his career designing yachts. He drove to the east coast and got a job with one of the established firms but he must have had his ideas already in his head and he was impatient. He only stayed one week, sleeping in his car, and then suddenly, he announced that he was going back to California to build a boat. That boat was Ganbare, a wooden 35 footer which turned yacht design upside down. It was his first boat and it won just about everything.

But it wasn’t easy. Doug was 28 years old 1973, still wore his hair maybe a bit too long to get a real job and he was not an established designer. He didn’t have a commission from anyone to design a boat for them. He didn’t really have the money himself. He had however impressed some of the local sailing community with his ideas and enthusiasm, including Carl Eichenlaub, the fabled San Diego sailor and wooden boat builder, and Carl agreed to build Doug’s design, on a budget. In eleven weeks they completed Ganbare, an IOR One Tonner which shocked the IOR fleet with her speed and sweet sailing ability.

After nearly winning the 1973 International One Ton Cup with Ganbare, clearly the fastest One Tonner in the series despite being built on a shoe string budget, Doug’s career took off. He sold the boat in Italy, paying back all of his costs, and was rewarded with several new design commissions.

Another of Doug’s boats, 'Gumboots', swept the fleet the next year. By then Doug Peterson was a design sensation and his office was producing design after winning design. After Ganbare,and Gumboots, he produced many well known and successful boats including Kindred Spirit, Vendetta, Racy, Great Pumpkin, Petrified, High Noon, Anabelle Lee, High Roler, Country Girl ( Half Ton ), Louisiana Crude, Stinger, Checkmate, Eclipse, Yena, Rubin, Ragamuffin', and Moonshine. Besides pure speed, Doug Peterson’s designs were known for being moderate boats with great all around sailing characteristics. Because of this his designs dominated both offshore racing and production racer/cruisers fleets as well. Production boats such as the Contessa 35, the NY 40, the Baltic DP Series and the Serendipity 43, sold well, were commercially successful, and sailed well, being winners in race fleets around the world.

Wings was the first Serendipity 43, a production boat built from the Louisiana Crude lines by Tommy Dreyfus in his shop in New Orleans.

By the early 80’s much more radial boats, which the IOR rule encouraged, were being designed by others. Peterson preferred moderate boats and his later IOR designs, still moderate instead of radical, were not winners. In a way though, Doug was right about that. The new boats were not popular with the owners and IOR racing soon faded from the scene. Doug continued designing boats even though the IOR design faded from popularity. He moved on and designed several well known cruising boats such as the Peterson 44 and later became involved in several Americas Cup campaigns. He was a key design member of the winning 1992 America3 and in 1995 the was part of the Team New Zealand design team which produced NZL 32 Black Magic, another breakthrough boat. Black Magic dominated the 1995 America’s cup series. He designed the winning Louis Vuitton Cup boat for Prada Challenge in the 2000 cup.

We met Doug the first time in the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club basement on a snowy night when he and Laurie Davidson attended a workshop with the owners of several IOR boats for the purpose of adjusting the IOR rule to make older designs, such as Peterson’s Serendipity 43, competitive with the newer boats, such as Davidson’s fractionally rigged one tonners (Mad Max was an example). Doug and Laurie understood why the newer boats rated better under the IOR and they proposed an adjustment which leveled the fleet. Although Judy and I did not win many races under the IOR in the 80’s even with that rule change, we appreciated Doug Peterson’s easy going approach to solving the problem.

Later I spent a little time around Doug in Auckland New Zealand while I was covering the 2000 America’s Cup and Doug was working for Prada. One time I mentioned to him that I owned one of his boats, Wings, and that it had turned out to be a great cruising boat. Doug was surprised, he said, “It did?” I replied, “Yes, it did.” He seemed happy to hear that.

On another occasion I shared with him a joke I had made to people we met cruising that the Serendipity 43 was one of Doug’s better design and that he had taken many features of it over to Black Magic, his famous breakthrough AC boat. When I mentioned this joke to Doug he surprised me by agreeing, “Yes, I did.”

Doug was hard to manage in a corporate world however, and the America’s Cup was definitely corporate. When I tried to schedule interviews with him, he never showed up. Other reporters had the same experience. Finally a rather flustered Prada PR manager told me I’d just have to find him myself and that the press conferences were a good place start. It was and once I buttonholed him he was friendly and open. He told me one day that he loved the lines of a Swiss AC boat called “Be Happy”. When I saw the boat on a pier prior to being shipped back to Europe I understood Doug’s statement. I liked the boat too and if Doug Peterson thought it was a good boat, I knew it was. I thought of making it into a cruising boat. What a fantasy.

Through the 2000’s Doug continued to design beautiful super yachts for European clients and builders, and he spent time racing classic wooden boats in Europe as well. In 2008 the 227ft replica of the schooner Atlantic, for which Doug was the consulting engineer was launched. Atlantic, built at the Van der Graaf BV shipyard in the Netherlands, was completed in 2010.

His most recent design is a 104ft Jongert Sloop, the design was done in 2015 and the boat is under construction now.

In March 2017, Naval Architect Doug Peterson became the fourth SDYC member to be inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame

Doug Peterson isn't the first of Wings' creators to die. Tommy Dreyfus Wings' builder, died in 2007.

Peterson died Monday, June 26, 2017 in a San Diego hospital after a long battle with cancer, aged 71.

click here for more photos of Doug and his boats.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, La Cruz Huancaxtle

Feb. 10, 2010-Reaching to Rebak

Wings stood out from Tanjung Heads into a fresh NE breeze on a crisp Thursday morning and spread full sail to the following wind.

Shortly after the main filled they hoisted the asymmetrical kite which opened with a crack and they bore off to the west on a blue ocean under a clear sky leaving a straight white wake to the east behind them.

The port jibe would take them into the north shore of Langkawi so they sailed on starboard toward Thailand’s Taratao Island, watching over their left shoulder for the proper time to jibe on a good line back to clear Chinchin, the NW cape of Langkawi.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Reaching for Rebak

When they drew close to Taratao and were a mile off and it appeared that they would soon be calling unannounced into Thailand they jibed the kite and turned back toward Malaysia and still needing to sail lower they set and pulled back the pole.

The wind built and a swell rolled in from behind. A puff hit and the boat threatened to round up. The helmsman pulled hard on the tiller and the boat slid down the face of the wave and surged forward.

The knotmeter showed low nines; it was fun.

They sailed around the leeward side of Langkawi, staying off by 2 and a half miles, and kept their wind while boats in closer to the island would have been stalled, if there were any, which there were not; they were sailing alone.

As expected the wind then came around the island from the other side of the mountain and it went forward. Dropping the kite and setting the #2 they sheeted in on port tack for Rebak Island and sailed close to the wind.

At the Rebak harbor entrance they dropped the sails and motored into the channel. Wings had sped over the 24 miles from Tanjung Ruh to Rebak in a short time and pulled into port before lunch; a good run.

Click here to see the other shots of our sail back to Rebak.

Click here to see the log book pages of our sailing trips in Febuary 2010

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Langkawai

Dec 15, 2009-Part of the weekend continues

Hauling out again!

It's Tuesday; we're in Rebak.

We hauled again on Saturday to fix the leaking stern tube.

My weekend was spent heads down in the engine bilge with a grinder in my hand or a four pound sledge.

Either fixing fiberglass or beating the hell out of a stubborn shaft flange.

So today, those jobs being finally done and Wings back in the water, I put together the new Zodiac, mounted the Mercury (wasn't that sort of kinky?) and it wouldn't run!!!

Judy pointed out that I was leaving dirty fingerprints on the new white Zodiac; after I already left dirty footprints on Wings' deck, which she just cleaned.

Where's the rum?

Anyhow, here is the new Zodiac (and BTW, the deck looks gorgeous sweetheart).





Click here to see a few of shots of the weekend; not bad actually.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings Langkawi

Dec 5, 2009-Sailing to Telaga

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Kite reaching on the way home

It looked light to me when I stuck my head out the hatch on Saturday morning but outside of Rebak Marina we found a bucket of wind. The #2 jib was left in the bag on deck and we pulled the #4 out the hatch for the hoist. Even under this reduced sail the boat heeled right over and we started sailing fast on a close reach to the North, first Sherry then Judy steering, on our way to Telaga Harbor.

Soon the wind was up further and I saw that the #2, on the leeward side of the foredeck, was getting wet. I went forward to throw it below and got a face full of salt water for my trouble. Not wanting to get any wetter I dragged the sail up to weather and refolded it in the bag enough to toss it down the hatch. Boy were we steaming along by this point! It was real sailing for a change and it felt good.

Shortly after that a wave came on board along the leeward deck and washed the Avon a foot or so along the side where the next wave caught it and threatened to carry it away. In fact it was half way over the side and we’d have lost it for sure but for the rope by which it was tied to the jib track and by Judy’s fast action on the helm. She bore off immediately, or did as soon as I responded to her order to dump the main, and then I had a level deck to work on. Down the hatch too went the Avon.

Then the printer and some other gear fell off the computer shelf and caused quite a clatter from below and we had to go collect all of that off the cabin sole, now showing a big new dent, but once we were settled down and squared away we had a good sail the rest of the way to Telaga and arrived at the landing float at noon.

I have to say that Sherry handled the sailing well, steering for a while and she took her turn on the winches and halyards but when I tried to send her forward to hand the jib she drew the line and wouldn’t budge however she even did that on the return trip. Judy was magnificent! She hopped around the boat like the sailor she is and, with her knee pads on, turned to at every task with gusto and I love her for it. We both knew her back would pay the price the next day but it didn’t stop her.

After docking at Telaga our plan was to visit the Geo-Pak and ride the cable car to the top of the mountain behind Telaga and we were soon off on that excursion. The morning breeze had blown in some haze but we still enjoyed the view and cool air at the top of the mountain and hiked around until our legs wore out.

Coming home from Telaga the wind was lighter and we set the A-3 kite, had a nice reach, hit 8 knots when the wind piped up a bit and we were back in our slip at Rebak before dark.

So, all in all, it was a very good day.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Langkawi Thailand

Click here to see some more photos of the sailing and the cable car ride.

Nov. 12, 2009-Final Preparations at Yacht Haven

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Early Morning

We've been packing and finishing projects for several days and we are nearly ready to depart for Malaysia. Wings sinks deeper and deeper into the water as we pack more and more of our equipment and supplies on board. Its been three years since we carried all this stuff.

We are also throwing out a lot and we've been giving away piles of unwanted items such as extra clothes, linens, useless spare parts, worthless sails; you name it. We put little piles of junk on the dock near the trash can and it disappears instantly as local boat workers decide that our unwanted items are their new treasures.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
New Look Nav Station

Last night, in a late night of work, we installed the new Nav screen and we've set up our system to use MaxSea with the CM93 charts we have. This will allow us to interface with the new AIS transponder which we are anticipating buying in the US next spring.

This morning we took on fuel, not a lot, it's supposed to be cheaper in Malaysia, and Friday we will check out of Thailand. Actual departure is planned for Sunday, November 15, 2009.

We're ready to go sailing again.

Click here for some more images.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Phuket

October 27, 2009-Relaunched

wingssail images-Judy Jensen
Afloat

We re-launched Wings on Tuesday after 7 1/2 weeks in the yard and it was good to get it back in the water. Judy took some shots of the process.

Click here to see her photos.


Now the big clean up begins.

We've still got to get the new brackets for the wind vane plus the hydraulic panel is not finished and the refer needs some work; oh after the work which was done on the engine it needs a check up before we can start it.

The name needs to be put on the sides.

All of these things can be done in the water.

wingssail images-fredrick roswold
Windvane

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New Graphics


In a week we will be sailing.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Phuket Thailand

October 19, 2009-New Paint

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What a shine!

Click here to see the new paint.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings

May 1, 2009-Change in Plans

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Definitely not habitable

Friday morning, arriving at Wings for a three day weekend, we had plans to complete some mechanical projects and possibly admire some shiny new varnish work.

We had no idea we’d find the varnish worker still there, the work unfinished, and the boat totally uninhabitable.

Flexibility, that’s the key.

With the interior completely disassembled, the boat covered in dust, and a man with sandpaper busy making more, we quickly realized we wouldn’t be staying on Wings that night and we couldn’t dig into the mechanical work either but we still had three days to kill.

What to do?

Within 30 minutes we had rented a car and we were headed out for a three day drive with a map of Thailand, a camera, and no fixed itinerary or destination.

It turned out to be a fun trip and a good adventure. We’ll have a report and some photos soon. Meanwhile click here for some more photos of our interior project.

We’ve been looking at a bad paint job on Wings’ interior walls since they were sloppily done by a so-called painter we hired in Sydney in 2001. When the results are bad and you have to look at it day after day, year after year, you really come to regret not getting right the first time. Our walls had runs, bubbles, wrinkles, and after 8 years were turning dingy yellow. We knew the only way was to tear into a big sanding job. David Nutt tipped me off on how to do this when we spent some time with the Nutt family of the yacht Danza in Mooloolaba that same year.

“How do you sand the walls without making a huge mess with sanding dust?” I asked.

David said, “Wet sanding keeps the dust down.”

“What about the water?”

“Just put down a towel at the base of the wall where you are working.”

Well David was a boat builder and a competent guy so I stored away that bit of instruction. Now in 2009 it was time to put it to the test. We bought a sleeve of 80 grit wet and dry, found two good sanding blocks, and got at it.

The results were immediately promising; by the next day we had sanded one wall, two surfaces out of 21 in the main cabin, and they were very smooth. But this used up the weekend and I had to head back to work in Bangkok. To keep the project going Judy stayed on the boat and we hired Hasan and his various nephews to spend the next week sanding and we showed Hasan how to use a powerful work light to cast a shadow which revealed any slight waviness. We were determined to have a great job.

When I returned the cabin was ready for paint. Working slowly, with high quality enamel and small foam rollers, we repainted the walls. It took three coats, and lots of care to get a shiny, high gloss, surface but in the end we had the nice walls that we wanted (OK, bulkheads for you die-hard boating terminology fans).

Now we needed to re-do the varnish trim.

For this we hired Mali and his crew. That was three weeks ago, and it brings us full circle to today.

Our interior project still includes upholstery, lighting, new shelves and taps in the galley, and we don’t know what else, and there will be plenty of mechanical projects later too.

But, by remaining flexible we turned a setback in our plans into an opportunity.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Phuket