Sparkman & Stephens .sx Olin & Rod Stephens had a stronger influence on contemporary yacht design than any other team .sx We look at S&S and their achievements .sx Geoff Pack .sx When , in 1929 , the American father of two boat - loving boys , Olin and Rod Jnr , both of whom had abandoned their college careers , agreed to have built one of their yacht designs , he couldn't have known that he was backing a team , Sparkman &Stephens , which was to become the greatest influence in yacht design this century .sx As he watched his slim new 52ft yawl Dorade sliding into the waters of City Island , New York , Rod Stephens Snr couldn't have imagined that she would re-write the rules of yacht design , and be the inspiration for new boats for a further three decades .sx The days of ocean racing being dominated by souped up workboats such as Jolie Brise and Alden's hefty Malabar schooners were over .sx Olin Stephens was one of the first designers to concentrate on distributing weight to maximise performance , and although Dorade was disappointingly heavy ( due to a surfeit of frames ) , she was built with a lightweight interior .sx Another component of her success was the fact that she rated well under both the RORC and American CCA rules of the time .sx Dorade possessed the rare combination of being both beautiful and radical .sx Twenty-year-old Olin had drawn the hull using his recent experience of designing some 6-Metres .sx Rod had been responsible for her deck layout , bermudian rig and the supervision of her building in the Minneford Yacht Yard .sx She entered the following year's Bermuda Race and was pipped at the post when a badly calibrated sextant put them a shade too far est , resulting in her coming second in her class , third overall .sx The following year , 1931 , Dorade entered the ten-boat Transatlantic Race from Newport to Plymouth skippered by Olin .sx She was the third smallest boat and arrived after 16 days , two days ahead of the next competitor , and four days ahead on handicap .sx Apart from their father ( who was also paying the bills ) she was crewed by Rod and friends whose average age was just 22 .sx She went on to win that year's Fastnet Race before the crew returned home to a ticker-tape parade up New York's Broadway .sx The partnership of Drake Sparkman , a New York yacht and insurance broker and Olin Stephens was formed in 1928 .sx Sparkman quickly recognised the 19-year-old's brilliance and they immediately started designing dayboats and 6-Metres .sx Sparkman &Stephens was formally incorporated a year later and , in spite of the Great Recession , kept very busy as word spread .sx After her success in 1931 , Dorade went on to win her class in the Bermuda Race the following year .sx In 1933 she headed back across the Atlantic , with Rod as skipper this time , to take on the Brits in the Fastnet .sx She was away from New York for three months , a period that took in a cruise through Norway ( she was engineless ) before crossing the Fastnet Race start line in Cowes .sx She won , again , and then headed back , along the Northern route , to New York , arriving in 26 days .sx For his three-month , 8,000-mile cruise , Rod was awarded the coveted Cruising Club of America Blue Water Medal .sx Nod bad for a 24-year-old who already had five Atlantic crossings under his belt .sx Rod joined S&S full-time in 1933 as an associate designer and chief inspector .sx One of his first projects was Stormy Weather , the successor to Dorade .sx Olin had always believed that , at 10ft 3in , Dorade was too narrow and Stormy Weather , launched in 1934 for owner Philip Le Boutillier , was drawn with 12ft 6in beam on a similar length .sx She was faster and more powerful as a result .sx She won her first outing , the 1935 Transatlantic Race ( skippered by Rod ) , and then the subsequent Fastnet before returning to New York .sx Dorade was sold in 1936 , taken down through the Panama Canal and up to California to compete in , and win , the Honolulu Trans-Pacific Race of that year .sx Sparkman & Stephens's work was nothing if not varied in the early days , their commissions including dayboats , Conewago , the 8-Metre Canada's Cup winner of 1932 and 1934 , and the 61ft schooner Brilliant ( still working today as a training ship out of Mystic Seaport , Connecticut) .sx Olin Stephens's big break came in August 1936 , when Henry Vanderbilt 'phoned him and asked if he would collaborate with Starling Burgess to design a defender for the 1937 America's Cup .sx Although he was quoted as saying that " the feel for the reality of performance is rarely seduced by mere tank statistics " , Olin had gathered much skill in the use and interpretation of tank testing .sx If the 137ft Ranger was an ugly duckling , with a snub nose and long flat sections ( dictated by the tests ) , she was unbeatable .sx She defeated all thirteen challenging American Js , trounced Stopwith's Endeavour II 4-0 ( with Olin on the helm half the time ) , and finished her racing days having never lost one of her thirty-seven matches .sx S&S went on to dominate the design of America's Cup boats until Olin retired in the 1980s and the Cup was lost .sx With only one exception they designed every successful defender between 1937 and 1980 ( many of which Rod and Olin also crewed in) .sx By the outbreak of war the S&S company had expanded to employ forty to fifty people .sx Rod , against a tide of military opposition , designed and campaigned the introduction of the DUKW amphibian .sx It was eventually accepted after rescuing the crew of a grounded ship in the height of a gale .sx By the end of the war 25,000 had been built which , at General Patton's personal recommendation , earned Rod America's most prestigious civilian award , the Medal of Freedom .sx During the wartime years the S&S design office worked on everything from pontoon bridges and submarines chasers ( more than 400 were built ) to mini-submarines , tugs and tankers .sx None of this commercial work interfered with their continuing achievements in both cruising and racing yachts .sx By 1957 , with 150 staff now on the payroll , Sparkman & Stephens were still firm favourites in the racing field .sx In the 1956 Bermuda Race , for example , with twenty-seven S&S designs entered , thirteen of the twenty-one trophies ( including the winner ) went to their boats .sx One of the more notable designs of that period was Finisterre , a 38ft yawl commissioned by American Carleton Mitchell .sx She was a tubby centreboarder intended more for long - distance cruising than racing .sx Mitchell reckoned to cruise 10 miles for every one he raced , and said , " Never once during the design discussions with Olin was the rule considered .sx " .sx One could argue that those were the days when a cruising boat could win races , or that Mitchell was well endowed with both skill and good luck .sx Indisputable is the fact that Finisterre won three consecutive Bermuda Races in 1956 , 1958 and 1960 .sx It was during the 1960s and 70s that S&S reached their height of popularity and success .sx Although other designers , including Carter and Giles , were using the new fin and skeg configuration , S&S designs like Roundabout and Clarion consigned the long keel and attached rudder to oblivion .sx Although Dorade had been such a strong influence until this time , the growing trust in the fin and skeg arrangement ( Herreshoff had used it in the last century , but no one believed it safe for offshore work ) allowed yacht design to take a completely new avenue .sx This was a period of great change in yachting , with the introduction of vastly improved materials for the building and equipping of yachts .sx In the racing field , S&S rode the crest of the wave and numbered the top yachtsmen , from both sides of the Atlantic , as their clients .sx The likes of Arthur Slater coming back for a succession of five Prospect of Whitbys , and Edward Heath's four Morning Clouds did the S&S reputation no harm .sx Genuine production-built yachts were also coming on the scene and comprising an important element of S&S's work .sx The Tartan Company in the USA used S&S designs , as did a new yard in Finland called Nautor .sx Olin Stephens was always a committee man and omnipresent , as well as a strong influence , in the rule-making bodies .sx There had always been a perennial problem with the conflict in American and British yacht racing rules .sx In 1967 the Offshore Rules Coordinating Committee formed an International Technical Division under Olin's chairmanship to merge the two rules taking the best from each .sx Out of this was born the IOR , which came into effect on 1 January , 1971 .sx Progress through the 1970s continued apace .sx As well as dominating events like the America's Cup and the Fastnet ( of the thirty-two races up to 1987 , S&S designs had won ten times ) , the Madison Avenue , New York , design office also left its mark on the new Whitbread Round the World Race , producing winners for the first two events ( Sayula II and Flyer) .sx The mid-70s saw a decline in S&S popularity and activity in the racing field , partly because of fashion and equally due to designers such as Holland and Petersen offering strong competition .sx Production boat design also diminished as Nautor moved to German Frers as their principal designer .sx It can only be conjecture whether the brothers' semi-retirement during the 1980s influenced the direction of the company , and how much is due to the changing nature of the yachting market , but today the staff is down to twenty-two .sx The Madison Avenue office concentrates on bigger ( 50-90ft ) custom yachts , as well as a flourishing brokerage and insurance business .sx Olin now enjoys his retirement in Vermont , still active in rule-making work although not going afloat .sx Rod retired 2 1/2 years ago after a stroke , from which he is steadily recovering .sx If S&S have lost the dominance position they held for decades on the race course , their modern large custom yachts are held in esteem .sx Whether it is statistics like their designs winning nearly one third of all the Fastnet Races , or producing approaching 3,000 designs , or creating a ventilator 60 years ago which , to this day , has yet to be bettered , the S&S marque has left an indelible impression on the world of yachting .sx Santana .sx A dedicated cruising yacht from Alan Buchanan .sx Peter Nielsen .sx Compared to most of the boats seen at past Yachting Monthly Classic Yacht Rallies , Santana is a mere stripling .sx When she came off the slip at Priors , Burnham on Crouch , in 1973 , the golden days of wooden boatbuilding were already gone , and her low , elegant silhouette belonged to another decade .sx Her lines were drawn by Alan Buchanan and partner Peter Williams to a commission for a pure cruising boat , although her owners also specified full spinnaker handling gear , leading one to surmise that they also had club racing in mind .sx She is an interesting boat , not merely because she was built when glassfibre series boats were already dominating the industry , but because she gives the lie to the theory that a traditionally constructed wooden boat will have less interior volume than a GRP vessel of the same size .sx In common with other Buchanan boats built at Priors , with whom the designer had a long association , she was built to Lloyd's A1 specifications ( although no longer kept in class ) , with carvel Honduras mahogany planking on rock elm frames .sx The ballast keel is lead and in line with Buchanan's weariness of electrolytic corrosion , which can lead to nail sickness in wooden boats , the floors are bronze and there are no ferrous fastenings ; her planking is as sound as when it was first fastened to the frames .sx As far as her owner David Colquhoun knows , the seams have needed no attention since she was launched .sx Her decks , coachroof , coamings and trim are also of teak .sx The hull is very fair , and it is not obvious from looking over Santana that she was the first wooden boat built at Priors in several years .sx In common with many other yards , they had turned to fitting out glassfibre hulls at the tail end of the 60s , and Alan Buchanan remembers ( somewhat harshly ) that when he saw the finished boat , " I thought she was bent in the middle .sx