Dick Carter, the iconoclast
Dick Carter is the most French of American naval architects. Quite simply because his story and his career are closely linked to French sailors who embraced his bold, forward-thinking ideas, at a time when the British still preferred the undoubtedly brilliant, but far more conservative Olin Stephens. This is how, for example, the Carter 33 and 37 models, built in Greece, were imported into France for years by Michel Vanek from Vannes. Another Frenchman played a key role in Dick Carter’s career, Bertrand Imbert. Between two expeditions to Adélie Land, a French territory in Antarctica where he helped establish scientific bases in the 1950s, Bertrand Imbert never missed an RORC race at the helm of his Medalist, Astrolabe*. But in 1963, a bad ankle sprain kept him from racing the Fastnet, and he offered the helm of his Bill Tripp design to the young Carter, maybe because Carter had just won the Block Island Race, in the US, aboard his own Medalist, named Rabbit. Dick Carter sailed his first Fastnet at the helm, with a more than respectable result: finishing 4th in his class and 6th overall out of 125 competitors. But that was not the most important part. What truly changed Dick Carter’s life was the question Bertrand Imbert asked him the day after the finish: “What could be done to make the boat less skittish downwind?”. A seemingly simple question, but one that led to a complete change of perspective, because at the time, as Dick recalls, both architects and sailors thought exclusively in terms of upwind performance. The ability to sail upwind as fast as possible was the ultimate benchmark, the definitive standard by which everything was judged.
The downwind revolution
And yet, in a race like the Fastnet, you are far from spending all your time hard on the wind, quite the opposite, and major gaps can open up on downwind legs… However, the boats at this time, with their rudders attached to long keels, are notoriously unstable and difficult to handle when sailing downwind. Now obsessed with this question, Dick heads to the drawing board. Starting off from what he knew best – a Medalist, in essence – he separates the rudder from the keel and moves it to the rear: he is one of the first, if not the first, to do this. This design, built by Frans Maas at the Dutch yard of the same name, becomes the Rabbit (not to be confused with the earlier Medalist that shared this name), and at her helm, Dick Carter makes his own name by winning the 1965 Fastnet. This is followed by the Rabbit II, the Tina, which became a famous production class, the Red Rooster, which won the 1969 Fastnet thanks to its revolutionary canting keel, Gaston Defert’s Palynodie, Karajan’s Coriolan, then the Gitana V and a certain Vendredi 13… These were the Carter years. But, for Dick Carter, as he confides to us with some emotion in the lounge of the hotel in La Trinité where he welcomes us, the Rabbit is still the boat that changed everything for him, and for a few others as well. Innovative in every way, it also featured a groundbreaking mast. Dick came up with the idea to run all the halyards inside the aluminum profile to reduce drag. Today, this is standard practice, but at the time, this was a stroke of genius! He fondly remembers the feverish hours spent with Ted Hood, the American sailmaker and mast builder, bringing this invention to life. More than the victories, the awards, it is these moments of pure creativity, and the people who made them possible (Ted Hood, Frans Maas and others) that are still his favorite memories. The interview, necessarily slow and careful, cannot last for hours. But the memories and passion are still very much alive. So is the humor, as Dick tells us this is his very first interview in France. Even during the media heyday of the Vendredi 13, French-speaking journalists preferred to turn to Jean-Yves Terlain or Claude Lelouch, the owner… “It was about time!”, Dick concludes with a mischievous smile. Yes, Dick, it was time to pay tribute to your visionary stroke of the pen and your iconoclastic ideas. The crews of the Carter Cup will do so in their own way, on the water, offering a spectacle that takes us back to the golden age of RORC racing, when winning and elegance went hand in hand. A spectacle that sparks dreams of other vintage races, open, perhaps, to designs from Stephens, Illingworth… Mauric? The Super Arlequin is ready!
* Named, it should be noted, in homage to the frigate on board which Dumont d’Urville discovered Adélie Land.
The rabbit coup!
Trained in “land-based” architecture at Yale University, Dick Carter was an avid sailor but had never designed a boat. His first attempt, Rabbit, turned out to be a masterstroke… At the time, he was sailing a Medalist, a Bill Tripp design with a traditional long keel, as was the norm. Rabbit shared similar proportions, but Dick had a revolutionary idea: move the rudder aft and mount it on the transom to improve downwind stability. He may not have been the absolute first to try it, but Rabbit’s Fastnet victory silenced all doubters — and the transom-hung rudder quickly became the new standard.
Innovative in many ways, Rabbit also featured an adjustable keel trim and a curious mast Carter had developed with Ted Hood. Its boldest feature? All halyards ran inside the mast — unthinkable at the time, even scandalous… Yet again, it became the norm.
To say that Dick Carter invented the modern sailing yacht might be an exaggeration — but only just.
