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The Maestro – Bob Perry Profile

Posted by Fiona McGlynn | BWI Award-Winning Articles , Sailor Profile

The designer of some of sailing’s most legendary boats, Bob Perry continues to push boundaries.

The design studio of Robert “Bob” Perry, upstairs in his Marysville, Washington, home is purposeful and busy yet warm and elegant, its walls a gallery of some of the world’s most successful and well-known cruising boat designs. Suitably awed by dozens of gleaming half-models, I ask him: Can he name them all?

“Really? You want me to tell you what all the boats are in rapid-fire succession?” he says. “Sure, sure, let’s go.

“Valiant 40, Baba 30, Tayana 37, Fairweather Mariner 38, CT 54, Islander 26, Cheoy Lee 48, Esprit 37, Meridian, Islander 34, Passport 40, Wentworth 17, Tatoosh 42, Seamaster 46, Cheoy Lee 35, Valiant 30 (which they never built, the Valiant 32 is over there), Islander 32, Mirage 26, Cheoy Lee 44, Golden Wave 42 (built by Cheoy Lee), Baba 40, Perry 47, Islander 28, CT 65, Lafitte 44…”

He goes on. It might be enough for another man to rest on such laurels, but everything in this studio points to the occupations of a restless, creative mind. A broad drafting table resides front and center atop an oriental rug, coffee cups stuffed with pencils of every type and color at the ready. Two acoustic guitars rest in stands near an amp, while an electric bass sits propped nearby. An Australian flag drapes over the door, an eclectic array of smoking pipes hangs on a wall, and tubes holding dozens of designs fill a rack in one corner.

A piece by Mendelssohn, the 19th-century German composer, plays softly in the background as Perry sits at his desk across from three computers and returns to his work. His right hand flutters with the mouse and he occasionally “tsks” or mutters something under his breath.

I sit awkwardly behind him, feeling something of an intruder, hesitant to break his intense focus again.

The leftmost monitor on his desk pings, piercing his concentration. It’s an update from The Robert Perry, Yacht Designer, Fan Club , a Facebook group that currently numbers over 6,400 members. Perry posts to the group most mornings. His topics vary from technical (such as offering insights into his design process) to nostalgic (perhaps reminiscing about his time building boats in Taiwan). His fans respond enthusiastically, often with questions for “the Maestro,” as he’s affectionately dubbed. Recently he’s invited them to provide input on the design of an ultimate 37-foot cruiser, a “durable, bluewater, family cruising boat design, up to today’s performance targets.”

A yacht designer engaging with fans on Facebook is something that Perry’s mentor, renowned naval architect and marine engineer William Garden (1918-2011), could scarcely have imagined. “Bill Garden had this attitude that he never wanted his photo published,” says Perry, “because, as he explained it, everyone has this idea of what a designer looks like. You don’t want to shake that image. Let them have it.”

A Love Discovered

As a youngster, Perry quite literally marched to the beat of his own drum—at one point he was kicked out of the school band for twirling cymbals overhead—an independent streak that perhaps was seeded while living his first 13 years in Australia, where his father had met his mother while on R&R during WWII.

“I got in a bit of trouble,” Perry says. “I wasn’t a troublemaker. I was just immersed in my own stuff.”

But he never got interested in boats and sailing until the eighth grade, when he chose sailing as the topic of a presentation. He became engrossed in the lore and beauty of old clipper ships, setting sail on imaginary voyages for which he kept detailed ship’s logs, dreaming of one day trying the real thing.

“I was soon buying sailing magazines and devouring them,” he writes on his website. “One afternoon I picked up a copy of Boating and on the cover was a nice photo of a Rhodes-designed Chesapeake 32. Lightning struck. I had never seen a thing designed by man that had so much beauty. I decided I would not go into the Coast Guard after all. I’d become a yacht designer.”

With the support of one of his teachers, Mr. Kibby, Perry ordered a small drawing board and drafting equipment that he could use at home. His first drawing? A model of the Civil War ironclad Merrimack . He worked part-time at a meat market to afford curves and drafting tools. Though he didn’t apply himself in more traditional topics, he excelled in Mr. Kibby’s mechanical drawing classes.

His geometry teacher, Don Miller, who was an avid sailor, encouraged him to join a local yacht club and start sailing.

“He realized I was drawing boats all the time and not doing my schoolwork…He said, ‘You should go talk to Bill Garden,’ the local famous yacht designer. I knew who Bill Garden was because I was just devouring every sailing magazine I could get my hands on.”

A nervous young Perry made arrangements to visit Garden’s office early on a Saturday morning. That day, he walked into a universe of yacht design and stood transfixed by his surroundings: stacks of designs, half models, and photos of boats. Garden took Perry out for lunch, beginning what would become a lifelong friendship.

“Looking back, Mr. Kibby, Don Miller, and Bill Garden combined to give me the skills, opportunities, and self-confidence I needed to pursue my dream,” Perry wrote in Yacht Design According to Perry .

A Budding Designer

When he got to college, Perry initially studied mechanical engineering before switching two years in to become an English major. He put himself through college by playing music, having started in a band called The Bandits when he was 18.

At the end of his fourth year, he quit college and did a short stint for a company called Marine Weight Control before landing a position with yacht designer Jay Benford. Though it paid poorly, it introduced Perry to the business of yacht design.

“I was supposed to get 10 percent of every job we finished but we never finished,” says Perry. “I got $100 and a water-stained book. I still have it actually—it’s a very good book. It’s about traditional Dutch yachts.”

Perry left Benford’s office after a year, only to return a year later, but this time at a guaranteed hourly rate, five days a week. His first design, a 47-foot ketch, was published and reviewed in National Fisherman . Upon seeing the review, Benford insisted that all inquiries go directly to him.

Not long after, a Californian named John Edwards asked Perry to design a 47-foot ketch in a letter that Perry dutifully handed over to Benford. It sat in a stack of unanswered mail for two weeks until Perry couldn’t stand it any longer. When Benford was out of the office, he retrieved the letter and answered it.

Edwards and Perry designed the boat in his dining room. Perry also began doing drawings for boatbuilder Vic Franck. When Benford learned of Perry’s moonlighting he was “justifiably angry.”

Seeing the writing on the wall, Perry applied for and landed a draftsman position with renowned racing yacht designer Dick Carter. In 1973, he moved to Boston and began working for Carter designing IOR boats for wealthy clients.

By 1974, Perry was also working on three designs of his own, the Valiant 40, what would become the CT 54 (an evolution of Edwards’ 47-foot ketch), and the Islander 28. He was also doing drafting work for Ted Brewer at night.

“It was good old Ted who said to me, ‘You are a yacht designer.’ ’’ Perry writes on his website. “I thought if Ted thinks I am a yacht designer then I must be. Ted should know.”

The Defining Boats

Going into this interview, I knew the challenge of profiling a designer as prolific and beloved as Perry would be choosing which of his designs to focus on. I would inevitably disappoint the many Perry owners who would not see their boat in these pages. So, I unburden myself of this weighty decision and leave it to the Maestro himself.

“Which boats would you say have most defined you?” I ask.

“Well, you’d have to say the Valiant 40, and the CT 54, which was the first fiberglass boat I designed, because without those I don’t know where I’d be. And the Islander 28. My whole association with Islander gave me a river of royalties for a number of years.”

The CT 54 emerged from those first drawings with Edwards, who took them to the Ta Chaio yard in Taiwan and discovered that building the 47-footer would be cheaper than he’d expected. So, he made it bigger, creating a 54-foot clipper-bowed ketch that he dubbed the Hans Christian 54.

The young Perry labored over the designs, further refining his iconic style. He was to be paid $700 for the design, half up front and half at completion, but as time went on, the second half remained overdue. His relationship with Edwards further soured when he drew a 34-foot double ender for Edwards, never got paid, and then heard about a 36-footer being built.

“I’m thinking, ‘I didn’t design a 36-footer,’ so I called him up and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we did a bigger version.’ I said, ‘Well, I look forward to the royalties.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re not getting royalties.’ I said, ‘OK, then I don’t want anything to do with you on any level.’ So, I did the Tayana 37, which was not identical but damn close, and I sold 600. So that was my revenge.”

When C.T. Chen, the president of Ta Chaio, learned that Edwards had not paid the entire amount for the Hans Christian 54, he bought the design from Perry for the remainder of the design fee. Hence, the Hans Christian 54 became the CT 54.

Ultimately Perry developed a long and prosperous business relationship and friendship with Chen and his two brothers. Perry felt embraced by Taiwan, and he learned Mandarin and a bit of Taiwanese. The CT 54 sold well, prompting a 65-footer, then the CT 56, an update to the CT 54.

Though the Valiant 40 followed the CT 54, Perry marks it as the real start of his career as an independent yacht designer. While working at Benford’s, Perry had made fast friends with Nathan Rothman, Benford’s business manager. The two young men dreamed of starting a company together, becoming their own bosses, and building “their” boat.

Perry set to work on a 40-foot double-ender. That year, 1973, the Westsail 32 had graced the pages of Time magazine, fueling the notion that bluewater cruisers ought to be double-enders. As such, Perry wanted to create the perfect canoe stern and took inspiration from the likes of Bill Garden and Holger Danske.

His experience working with Carter had taught him a lot about performance, and he obsessively studied other designs’ sail area/displacement and displacement/length ratios after reading a Ted Brewer article about these parameters. At the time, a typical cruiser displacement/length ratio was 400; Perry’s design would have a displacement/length ratio of around 260. This was a radical departure from the traditional slow, heavy cruising mold in what would become the first performance cruiser.

The first Valiant was launched in the fall of 1974, and soon they were flying off the production line. The first builder, Uniflite, turned out 150 Valiant 40s before blistering problems with Hetron fire-retardant polyester resin helped drive the company out of business in 1984.

Valiant production then moved to Lake Texoma, where Texas Valiant dealer Rich Worstell built another 200 Valiant 40s. The Valiant 40’s success spurred several variations: the Valiant 32, 47, 50, and 39.

Perry feels lucky and proud to have his name tied to Valiant.

“I fully appreciated back in 1974 and 1975 that what we were doing with the Valiant 40 was like catching lightning in a bottle,” he wrote in his book.

His relationship with Islander began after meeting the company’s executives at the 1973 Long Beach Boat Show and then drawing the Islander 28. It became a huge success and led to an Islander 32, which also sold over 500 boats. He followed this with the Freeport 36.

Perry worked for Islander for 10 years and considers it critical to establishing him in his early career. He recalls at one point standing on the Islander shop floor, and almost every boat under construction was one of his designs.

The Ultimate Treasure

The fan page emits another ping, and we both look over to see the latest update.

“It’s pretty active,” says Perry.

“How many members do you have now?” I ask.

“Let’s see, 5,311. My wife was the 5,000th. One day she looked over my shoulder, and I said, ‘I need one more member to get to 5,000, and she said, ‘Well, I’ll do it.’ ”

Perry met his wife, Jill, in a restaurant across the street from his office in Seattle, Washington, where she worked as a server and he was a frequent lunch patron. One day, Perry asked her out sailing and she agreed. “It wasn’t my boat, but I took her out on a Valiant 40,” says Perry. “Then we went to see the movie Jaws . I got a bloody nose, then came out of the theater and forgot where I parked my car.”

Though the first date didn’t go exactly as planned, the two instantly connected. They were together a year when they had their first son, Max.

Perry points to a photo on his desk of a smiling boy and a sailboat. “That’s Spike,” he says. Their youngest son, a talented engineer, sailor, and craftsman, died suddenly from bacterial pneumonia at age 30.

“For my wife, Jill, and me, the family means everything,” Perry notes on his website. “Our two boys, Max and Spike, are the ultimate treasures of our lives…Like it or not, and I don’t like it, Spike’s death partially defines who I am.”

Though I was a bit nervous at the interview’s outset—and Perry acknowledges on his website that some people have dubbed him an occasional curmudgeon—any hint of tetchiness vanishes as we linger over family photos and the smiling faces of his grandchildren, 8-year-old Violet and 6-year-old Drake, whom Perry clearly delights in.

Perry’s current and recent work—mostly custom—includes some spectacular and creative projects like the Duffy 22, a production electric boat, and a submarine for Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. His latest project is an 85-foot boat commissioned for humanitarian missions in the Philippines. The 62-foot double-ender Frances Lee —an “old man’s daysailer” designed for a friend—is a whetted knife through the water; he says it’s his favorite design.

“It’s interesting, now that I’m 73, I look at the modern boats and I think, ‘If I was 15 today, looking at those boats, would I want to be a yacht designer?’ Probably not. Because when I was 15 and 16, there was tremendous diversity, and now there’s tremendous sameness and orthodoxy. I realize that I’m not going to move with the times. I’m not going to follow the trend. I want to do boats that I want to do,” he says. “If you asked me to design a French boat, I’d say, “Get some French guy, that’s not my style.” My heart wouldn’t be in it. I didn’t realize I had a style before, but I know now I do. I’m a Pacific Northwest guy.”

I ask him what advice he would give to someone starting out.

“God, there’s so few opportunities to get started,” he says. “With my career, you really have to chalk it up to the fact that I was in the right place at the right time.” Perry now mentors a budding designer in Australia, whose father contacted Perry when the boy was just 8, saying he wanted to be a designer.

“He’s about 16 now, and he started designing and building his own boats with very little parental help. I’ve always felt that it was a bit of an obligation to give back, because Bill Garden took the time to talk to me.”

Perry’s dog, Ruby, comes running in looking for a rub, and Perry happily obliges. As our interview comes to a close, the conversation turns to pets and the stray cat that Perry feeds every day.

Somewhat sheepishly, I ask him if he’ll sign his book for me. He opens it on the drafting table. Rather than inscribe the front page, he takes a handful of colored pencils and carefully illustrates a beautiful schooner, beam reaching across the inside page. My very own Perry design. He signs his drawing with a flourish. Then, the Maestro closes the book.

Perry-phernalia

Every year, Perry owners congregate in late August at Port Ludlow, Washington. Activities include potlucks, a surprise guest speaker, and live bands. (Though Perry no longer plays music regularly in a band, he’s been known, on occasion, to play at the annual Perry Rendezvous.) The event fills up quickly so be sure to reserve a spot. See perryboat.com for more information.

For owners of Perry boats not mentioned above, as well as anyone interested in the background of some of the best-known good old boats, I emphatically recommend Perry’s book Yacht Design According to Perry . He explains several aspects of yacht design and tells the fascinating stories behind his boats.

About The Author

Fiona McGlynn

Fiona McGlynn, a Good Old Boat contributing editor, has sailed from Canada to Australia.

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• Sailboat Guide

Robert Perry

Probably the most influential yacht designer of the late 20th century, it’s been said there are more sailboats cruising the worlds oceans designed by Bob Perry than any other designer. He remains best known for the his  Valiant 40  design which went on to influence cruising sailboats by adding performance to a genre that had previously meant slow and heavy. Through his career he has designed boats for many well recognized names in the industry, such as Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Passport and Saga.

As a young boy he had a burning passion for yacht design. His first break came in 1970 working as an assistant Jay Benford’s offices who specialized in ferro-cement yachts that were becoming popular at the time. He went on to work in the offices of Dick Carter which gave Perry a taste of designing racing yachts to the IOR rule. Many of his subsequent cruising boat designs have been influenced by his days at the Carter office, Perry seems to bring a performance dimension to most of his designs.

His first design to make it to factory production was the Taiwanese built CT54 for John Edwards, founder Hans Christian Yachts. This connection lead on to a whole family of full keeled double enders for practically every Taiwanese yard exporting cruising yachts to the US during the 1970s and 80s including the  Tayana 37 , the most popular semi-custom boat built in that era. During those years Perry has evolved the full keel design to very much the state of the art to this present day.

Links & References

» Perry Yacht Designers Inc,  Robert Perry Bio \ »  Yacht Design According to Perry , My Boats and What Shaped Them, by Robert Perry, ISBN 978-0071465571

{% comment %} Robert Perry 11530 Tulare Way West Tulalip WA 98271 Phone: 360-652-7771 E-mail: [email protected] Bob Perry: [email protected] {% endcomment %}

99 Sailboats designed by Robert Perry

Islander 28

Islander 32-2

Islander Freeport 36

Passport 40

Flying Tiger 10M

Cheoy Lee 35

Norseman 447

Valiant Esprit 37

Seamaster 46

Perry 41/aloha 41.

Cheoy Lee 48

Hans christian 34.

Mariner 39 (Perry)

Islander Freeport 41

Passport 37

Islander 38 C

Golden Wave 42

Islander 26

Islander 34-2

C&C Landfall 39

Westsail 39

Valiant 40 PH

Passport 41

South Pacific 42

Tayana 47 CC

Cheoy Lee 43 MS

Cheoy Lee 44

Islander Bahama 28

Yachtcraft 32, islander freeport 38, islander 32-3.

Islander Bahama 26

Reliance 37.

Hans Christian 36

Passport 50

Passport 47

Passport 44, passport 456.

Passport 470 AC

Mirage 25 (Perry)

Mirage 27 (Perry)

Mirage 26 (Perry)

White wing 35/36.

Baba 40 Pilot House

Tashiba 36 PH

Valiant 42RS

Nordic 45 RS

CT-65 / Scorpio 72

Tayana 47 DS

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Robert “Bob” Perry

Sydney, Australia

June 25, 1946

Inductee Class Of

Robert Howard “Bob” Perry has spent his career designing comfortable, attractive, and easy to sail yachts.   He has over 380 designs to his credit, which have resulted in more than 6,000 boats that have been launched.   He looks back on his career, noting “My hobby has been my occupation.   So far, I’ve had a good ride.   I’ve weathered a few squalls along the way, but when I survey my collection of designs, I’m proud of my productivity and durability.”   One of his most notable designs is the Valiant 40, which was called a “performance cruiser.”   The boat featured a canoe type stern with a fin keel and skeg hung rudder instead of a traditional full keel.   Other builders Perry has designed yachts for include Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Hans Christian Yachts, Islander, Passport, Pacific Seacraft, and Saga.   He is a student of his craft and has taught yacht design at Evergreen State College in Washington.   Readers of Sailing magazine are familiar with his boat reviews that have been published in every issue for over forty years.

In 2008, Perry published a review of his own career with an overview of his approach to naval architecture.   The book is titled “Yacht Design According to Perry.” It is an easy-to-read overview with helpful drawing, diagrams, and pictures of his vast collection of designs.   He explained his goal for the book, “If I’ve mixed the right ingredients in the right proportions, this book – I hope – will be something any sailor can chew on and find nutritious.”

Perry was born in Toledo, Ohio.   His mother was from Australia and talked the family into moving to Sydney when Robert was one year old.   They returned to the USA in 1957 when Bob was 12 years old.   The family traveled on a Liberty ship that barely sailed at 9 knots across the Pacific Ocean.   Perry reflects on the trip, “Looking back, I think the month-long voyage played a seminal role in my obsession with boats.   I enjoyed every day of it, including the three days we spent riding out a typhoon in the North Pacific.”

The Perry family settled in Seattle, Washington.   Bob raced Penguin dinghies and crewed with renowned yacht designer Bill Garden and even served as his apprentice one summer.   He was bored and broke, and called yacht designer Jay Benford to show him a series of his yacht designs.   Perry was hired on the spot.   He spent one year with Benford before launching his own career that has been successful ever since.

~ Gary Jobson

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ROBERT PERRY

Robert H. Perry Yacht Designers

• 11530 Tulare Way West
• Tulalip, WA 98271
• Phone: 360-652-7771
• Mail: [email protected]
• BLOG DEL PROGETTISTA http://perryboat.sail2live.com
• SITE http://www.perryboat.com/

FROM http://bluewaterboats.org/designers/robert-h-perry/

Robert H. Perry

Last Updated: 18 Jan, 2010

Probably the most influential yacht designer of the late 20th century, it’s been said there are more sailboats cruising the worlds oceans designed by Bob Perry than any other designer. He remains best known for the his VALIANT 40 design which went on to influence cruising sailboats by adding performance to a genre that had previously meant slow and heavy. Through his career he has designed boats for many well recognized names in the industry, such as Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Passport and Saga.

As a young boy he had a burning passion for yacht design. His first break came in 1970 working as an assistant Jay Benford’s offices who specialized in ferro-cement yachts that were becoming popular at the time. He went on to work in the offices of Dick Carter which gave Perry a taste of designing racing yachts to the IOR rule. Many of his subsequent cruising boat designs have been influenced by his days at the Carter office, Perry seems to bring a performance dimension to most of his designs.

His first design to make it to factory production was the Taiwanese built CT54 for John Edwards, founder Hans Christian Yachts . This connection lead on to a whole family of full keeled double enders for practically every Taiwanese yard exporting cruising yachts to the US during the 1970s and 80s including the Tayana 37, the most popular semi-custom boat built in that era. During those years Perry has evolved the full keel design to very much the state of the art to this present day.

Links & References » Perry Yacht Designers Inc, Robert Perry Bio » Yacht Design According to Perry, My Boats and What Shaped Them, by Robert Perry, ISBN 978-0071465571

• 1 BIOGRAPHY
• 2 Robert Perry Designs:

Robert Perry Designs:

• http://www.perryboat.com/productionboats/productionboats.html
• BABA 30 , #91, 1976
• Baba 35, #105, 1979
• Baba 40 (Panda 40 / Tashiba 40), #116, 1980
• Cheoy Lee 35
• Cheoy Lee 43 M.S.
• Cheoy Lee 44, #96, 1978
• Cheoy Lee 48, #110, 1979
• Cheoy Lee Golden Wave 42, #128, 1980
• CT 48, #164
• CT 54 (Hans Christian 54), #60
• CT 65, #136
• Fairweather Mariner 38
• HANS CHRISTIAN 34 (TRADITIONAL)
• HANS CHRISTIAN 36 o UNION 36 (SAIL) (attribuito)
• Islander 26
• Islander 28, #76, 1974
• Islander 32, #80, 1975
• Islander 34
• Islander Freeport 36, #87, 1977
• Islander Freeport 38
• LaFitte 44, #100, 1978
• LaFitte 66, 1985
• NORSEMAN 447
• Passport 37, #157, 1984
• Passport 40, #112, 1980
• Passport 41, #116, 1987
• Passport 44
• Passport 47, #149, 1983
• Passport 49
• Passport 50
• Perrywinkle 8
• Perrywinkle 10
• Seamaster 46
• South Pacific 42
• Southern Offshore 42
• Tashiba 31, 1986
• Tashiba 36, #167, 1986
• TAYANA 37 , #70, 1975
• Tayana 47 / Tayana 48
• Valiant 32, #85
• Valiant Esprit 37, #94, 1977 / Valiant 39, 1995
• VALIANT 40 , #63, 1973 / Valiant 42, 1992
• VALIANT 47 / Valiant 50
• Westsail 38
• White Wing 36
• LIEN HWA SEAMASTER 46
• UNION 36 (SAIL)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Perry_(yacht_designer)
• Progettisti e designers
• Pagine che utilizzano DynamicPageList

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Yacht Design According to Perry: My Boats and What Shaped Them Hardcover – December 12, 2007

A great designer offers you a virtuoso tour through the world of sailboats

Bob Perry initiated the trend toward fast voyaging sailboats with his world-famous Valiant 40, which has been in production longer than any other cruising sailboat in history. But Perry is not only a leading yacht designer--he is also an accomplished wordsmith whose blunt, insightful, irreverent, and always entertaining boat reviews have captivated readers of Sailing magazine for 24 years. This book is vintage Perry, a no-holds-barred tour of the world of yacht design through the benchmark boats of his 30-year career.

• Print length 240 pages
• Language English
• Publisher International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
• Publication date December 12, 2007
• Dimensions 8.8 x 1.1 x 11.1 inches
• ISBN-10 007146557X
• ISBN-13 978-0071465571
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From the publisher.

Bob Perry’s body of work has established him as one of the world leaders in performance-oriented cruising yachts.Thanks to his sharp wit and critical insights, his popular yacht design reviews have appeared in Sailing magazine monthly for 24 years.

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press; 1st edition (December 12, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 007146557X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0071465571
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.12 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.8 x 1.1 x 11.1 inches
• #109 in Ship Repair & Maintenance
• #2,499 in Water Sports (Books)

About the author

Robert h. perry.

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book's content amazingly detailed and helpful for yacht design. They describe the narrative style as enjoyable and well-done. Readers also mention that the book is destined to be a classic treatise.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book's writing and content amazingly detailed, clear, concise, and easy to understand. They also say the book provides an expanded insight into boat building and the author's broad experience allows him to explore a wide range of topics.

"While Bob's book is filled with really great anechdotes describing the coming of age of the performance cruiser, the technical presentation is the..." Read more

"...That discussion also talks about the trade-offs of each. The discussion is clear , concise, and easy to understand...." Read more

"...Perry is an excellent writer, clear , concise and thorough and his broad experience allows him to explore a wide range of designs and design..." Read more

"...The author and highly successful naval architect shares his secrets with depth , breadth and clarity...." Read more

Customers find the book well-done and informative. They also say it's nicely printed.

"...by Robert Perry is very technical and highly detailed, and yet is easy to read and enjoyable. The best book I've ever read on sailboat design...." Read more

"Bob's eye for yacht design and his writing style are a joy ! Like a fine meal... you savor every bite! I'll order another copy, hopefully before long." Read more

"...His easily read prose is makes the understanding of yacht design much easier. I wish I had bought the book when it was first published." Read more

"An excellent book written by the maestro of yacht design. Readable , informative and destined to be a classic treatise on yacht design." Read more

Customers find the writing style enjoyable, witty, and fun. They also appreciate the anecdotal stories and technical information.

"...Perry is an excellent writer , clear, concise and thorough and his broad experience allows him to explore a wide range of designs and design..." Read more

"... His narrative makes enjoyable reading and he explains as best he can in layman's terms the innumerable constraints that are/were placed on a yacht..." Read more

"...He is witty , candid in his discussion and humble enough to note things he could improve in his own designs...." Read more

"...The guy can actually write! Many fun anecdotal stories as well as more technical sections." Read more

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Robert H. Perry Yacht Designers

Currently in design - a carbon power cruiser, currently in design - quail, currently in design - pacific seacraft south sea 61.

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