The Faster Master Builder

For the past week, the world’s fastest and most expensive racing yachts have been battling against each other in Cowes and Marseilles. Many of them were designed on the landing of a Georgian house in Ireland, by 29-year-old Ron Holland (top). He broke into the exclusive world of yacht designing just two years ago with the fast and temperamental boat “Golden Apple”(left). Now he is will enough established for his boats to be built in quantity like the Nicholson 33s (above, in Gosport. Owners gamble 100,00 and more for Holland’s boats which, even if they win, will do so for only one brief season. 

Report by Brian Moynahan, Sunday Times Magazine London 1976