Phil Morrison (yachts)
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Phil Morrison (born November 1946 is a British boat designer and racer.
He was born in Eastbourne, England.
His designs embrace dinghies, yachts, and multihulls; he has been successful in yacht and dinghy racing career since the late 1960s. He is noted for blending innovation with elegant well engineered structures and high performance, whilst also delivering users controllability and sailability.
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[edit] Dinghy Designer
Morrison grew up in Eastbourne, during the late fifties and sixties. Joining the nearby Pevensey Bay Sailing Club he learnt to sail the National 12 Class racing dinghy. The National 12 is a development class were anyone can design and build new boats within specific restrictions, such as length, beam, weight and sail area. At the age of 18 he designed his first racing dinghy, a National 12 called "China Doll" (1967) which was built by "Spud" (Peter) Rowsell in Exmouth, commencing a long association between the designer and that Devon town. Morrison sailed China Doll with Pete Wargent very successfully and the design became popular, making his name as a young designer, a series of different and successful National 12 designs followed over the next 25 years such as "Whisper" "Paper Dart" "Windfall" "Marmite Soldier" and "Crusader".
Meanwhile he qualified in Naval Architecture at Southampton University, then worked for marine fittings manufacturer Sea-Sure, designing a range of racing dinghy fittings which are still in production 35 years later.
Morrison designed his first Merlin Rocket "September Girl" which he sailed at the Whitstable Championships in 1969. This led to a string of very successful Merlin Rocket designs such as "Satisfaction", "Smoker's Satisfaction", "Summer Wine" and "NSM" (New Smoking Material).
His next step was to design an International 14, "Snoggledog", built by Laurie Smart, with which Morrison and Ray Sellings took second place in the Prince of Wales Cup race in Torbay in 1973, their second year in the class. Again this led to a string of designs for the Fourteens over the next 25 years.
Morrison also designed several small keel boats during the 1970s
A National 12 sailor at heart Morrison campaigned the ultimate two sail racing boat the Olympic Star with Andy Street in 1983/4.
[edit] Sailmaker
During the mid-seventies Morrison started a sail Loft based in Polegate near Pevensey Bay. He developed his own systematic and precise means of designing and cutting sails which enabled precise reproduction of previous designs something which was an unusual feature amongst British Sailmakers at that time.
Like many other yacht designers of his generation he was significantly influenced in his approach to both yacht and sail design by "Sailing Theory & Practice" by the Polish Author Czesaw A. Marchaj, first published in 1964.
[edit] Off-Shore Designer
Bigger projects beckoned after Morrison moved his sailing making and design business to Exmouth in a new partnership with "Spud" (Peter) Rowsell in the mid 1980s, the builder of his original design China Doll 17 years before. "Exmouth Challenger" a big offshore multihull designed and built for Mark Gatehouse was followed by other big offshore mono and multihull projects up to 60 foot in length.
[edit] One Design Classes
A precursor to his later interest in and wide influence on One Design Classes was his innovative original and very successful NSM design for the Merlin Rocket class which included the entire rig and fittings layout so that sailor's buying the design could be told exactly how to set up the boats in different conditions for best performance. Spud Rowsell and Jon Turner won the Merlin Rocket Championships in "Foot-Loose" at Abersoch in 1978 with a points performance that has never been bettered and guaranteed the future success of Morrison's approach to designing a complete boat.
Morrison's first direct exposure to designing in the more restricted One Design Classes, classes of dinghy which are supposed to all be nearly identical, subject to normal building tolerances, came with an invitation to design an "optimised" version of the Ian Proctor classic design the Wayfarer for Gordon Frickers. The resulting boat, "Wellington" was raced very successfully and Morrison went on to "optimise" designs in many one design classes as diverse as the Salcombe Yawl and the International Fireball, in the latter winning the World Championships with Jon Turner in Weymouth in 1981.
After an earlier abortive attempt to start a new twin trapeze One Design Class, the "Gemini", in 1978/9 with Bill Twine and Nick Lightbody at Pevensey Bay, Phil started receiving commissions to design new one designs for dinghy manufacturers, starting with the Laser 2000 for and followed by a series of Racing Sailboats (RS) designs for LDC (RS200 RS400 RS800 etc) and numerous designs for other dinghy manufacturers.
The more exotic projects clearly still fascinated him as a designer leading him to join the design teams of the the last two British America's Cup Challenges with reunited him with other designers who had also cut their teeth in National Twelves such as Jo Richards and Hugh Welborne.
In 2006 the Wayfarer Class, perhaps mindful of Morrison's earlier contribution to their class development with Wellington, commissioned him to redesign and update the Wayfarer for the current generation [1].
Morrison appears now to have established himself as Britain's third great class dinghy designer after Jack Holt and Ian Proctor. Between 1944 and 2005, these three designers have designed 28 out of the 110 active dinghy classes listed by the Yachts and Yachting Magazine in the UK at the beginning of 2005, including the Cadet, Mirror, GP14 and Enterprise (Holt), Wayfarer Wanderer and Topper (Proctor), and nine of the Laser and Racing Sailboat ranges (Morrison).
[edit] Stevie Morrison
Morrison's son Stevie Morrison has established himself as a successful international yachtsman with a string of international successes in classes from International Cadets to 49ers [2]
[edit] External References
A short interview with Phil Morrison about his life and work [3]
