The Trinado was a design collaboration between Russell Brown and myself. It was designed for Donald Young and built by Russell in Port Townsend, Washington. The original concept was for a small trimaran which would use Tornado hulls as its floats. The Tornado floats ended up being a little shorter on righting moment than ideal,…
Trailerable, high performance to cost ratio, home build-able and fun for the family to race and maybe spend 10 days cruising on. The combination of high stability, light weight and large sail area gives the Shilshole 27 excellent all-around performance on a windward-leeward race course. The lifting keel and rudder make shallow anchorages accessible, and…
The Riptide 55 was my first keel boat design (1994). She was designed and built for George Thurtle of Seattle WA who wanted a high performance offshore family cruising yacht. George is a very open-minded client who encouraged me to take the design to its logical conclusion, and I was perfectly willing to do so.…
Strum was built as an evolution of the concept behind the Riptide 35 and 44. She is a high performance long course racing boat with comfortable cruising accommodations. Her light displacement and water ballast make her capable of 24 hour runs in excess of 350 NM and cruising speeds under power of 10+ kts. Water…
Dark Star was designed and built for Jonathan and Libby McKee of Seattle. The design brief was for a high performance racer/cruiser capable of blistering speed on the race course (Jonathan is an Olympic gold medalist in the FD class and a silver medalist in the 49er class). Dark Star is also a comfortable family…
We like to think of the Riptide 41 as a high performance gentleman’s racer. It is designed to be sailed efficiently with a crew of between 6 and 8 rather than the 10-12 persons commonly found on a racing boat of this size, and it has comfortable accommodations for everyone on the boat. With its…
Designing the Mark II version of the Riptide 35 has been a fun process. Originally designed in 1996 as a true racer/cruiser, the Riptide 35 was our first high-performance water-ballasted design. Two of the boats were built (Ripple and Terremoto!) both of which have been successful in Pacific Northwest racing as well as in Hawaii…
The Riptide 35 was my first design for Jonathan and Libby McKee of Seattle. The concept for the 35 was conceived by Jonathan during a long and uncomfortable distance race on an ultralight 50 footer. He realized that a high percentage of the sailors on board were there purely as human ballast. His design brief…
The Riptide 30 is the newest member in our family of Riptide designs. Key features of the Riptide concept are: An easy to handle and simple gravity driven water ballast system that allows the boat to be super light downwind and in light air yet powerful upwind and reaching with a small crew. A powerful…
Although the Riptide 25 will have sportboat performance we do not think of it as a sportboat. It has enough stability and interior space to be comfortable on longer races and extended cruising. Water ballast means that the boat can be sailed effectively when short-handed. -Paul Particulars Overall Length 7.68 m Waterline Length 7.19 m…
