Living For Sail · video

What this video covers

Bob Perry, recently inducted into the U.S. Sailing Hall of Fame alongside posthumous inductees Charlie Morgan and Bill Lapworth, discusses his 50-plus-year career designing sailboats in a conversation with Jon at Perry's Washington State design studio.0:49 Perry traces his interest in yacht design to an eighth-grade English class presentation in Ballard, Washington, where researching sailing from library books sparked a lifelong obsession.3:07 He describes early encounters with Bill Garden — correcting the record that he never interned there, only paid for a meeting at age 15 — then working on and off for Jay Benford for three years before joining Dick Carter's office in a five-story submarine watchtower overlooking Boston Harbor, where he moonlighted on the CT-54 design and the original Valiant 40.4:23 Perry explains how he coined the term "performance cruiser" to describe the Valiant's niche between radical IOR racers and heavy full-keel cruisers like the West Sail, and how that framing helped the boat find its market despite fierce criticism from full-keel advocates.16:51 A chance meeting with Islander president Buster Hammond at the Long Beach Boat Show led to the Islander 28, with 600 hulls built.10:46 Perry estimates roughly 380 designs and 6,000 boats built across his career, including four all-carbon-fiber offshore cruising boats he considers unique in the genre.14:02

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