Frederick E. "Ted" Hood (born in May 1927 in Beverly, Massachusetts) is a distinguished American Yachtsman and Naval Architect. He started the company Hood Sailmakers in Marblehead, Massachusetts which makes sails. He won the America's Cup in 1974 skippering the yacht Courageous, which he built in his Marblehead shipyard, after which he built a faster yacht and sold Courageous to Ted Turner, who beat him in it on his way to winning the 1977 America's Cup.
He built the Ted Hood Marine Complex in Portsmouth, Rhode Island in 1985, where he opened Little Harbor Marine. His full service marina provided his customers with repairs for their yachts. Construction operations of Little Harbor Yachts were moved to Northern Taiwan. This operation began to design power boats exclusively due to changes in the boating market in the 1990s. In 1999 his company was sold to Hinckley Yachts[1].
Ted is currently the president of his own independent yacht design company, Ted Hood Yachts, LLC, which is located in the Hinkley Yachts complex of the Melville Marina in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Ted Hood Yachts has eight power yacht designs, including two Coastal Explorers and six Expedition series yachts, as well as two motor sailor designs on the market all with ocean-going capabilities[2]. All of Ted Hood's yachts are currently under production in Xiamen, China.
Ted was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993.
You can read more about him in the German Wikipedia entry.