FREQUENT FLYER

It was at the 1958 America’s Cup trials off Newport, Rhode Island, that Dick Bertram had his eureka moment. As the story goes, he was the sail trimmer aboard Vim in challenging, choppy conditions that had the chase boats struggling to keep up, so the way that one particular 23-foot powerboat was able to maintain its speed through the steep seas was all the more noticeable.

The boat was one of C. Raymond Hunt’s first deep-V designs. Bertram sought him out, sea-trialed the boat and commissioned Hunt to design a 30-footer for the Miami-Nassau off shore powerboat race. Bertram won, the superiority of the deep-V concept was clearly demonstrated and the rest—as they say—is history.

Bertrand Castelnérac had a similar eureka moment in Quiberon Bay in 2015. An intrepid, daredevil yachtsman of the sort that France seems to have a knack for producing, he was sailing a GC32—one of those hydrofoil catamaran sailboats for which insanity seems to be