It doesn’t matter which dock you walk down. It could be in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Port Townsend, Washington, Newport, Rhode Island, or anywhere in between. Every single boat on those docks—the styling cues, hull shapes, sheerlines—began as visions in the minds of boat designers.

Trying to decide which designers made the biggest impact during the 60 years Soundings has been published is like trying to decide which cruising ground is the best. They’re all exceptional in their own ways, with the beauty being in the eye of the beholder. As we chose 12 designers from the past six decades, we aimed to include people who achieved not just excellence, but also legacy.

To come up with a dozen names we started with a list of over 50 designers. We know that some may disagree with this list or feel that someone was overlooked. So please let us know who you think should have been included by writing us at [email protected].

C. Raymond Hunt

The deep-V hull that C. Raymond Hunt developed and patented in the late 1950s and early 1960s continues to influence the way powerboats are built today. The deep-V is known for being safe and comfortable, including in rough seas at higher speeds, which was proven when the 31-foot wooden Moppie that Hunt designed for Richard Bertram won the 1960 Miami-Nassau Race.

Hunt originally made a name for himself designing Concordia yawls in the 1930s, along with sailboats for the America’s Cup and Olympics. The National Sailing Hall of Fame called Hunt “a genius at his trade.”

After founding his design firm in 1966, he primarily became known for deep-V hull designs. Look at the boat industry today and you will see deep-Vs everywhere. Grady-White markets its SeaV2 hull as “a deep-vee ride with modified vee efficiency.” Boston Whaler promotes the deep-V hull on its boats and Viking Yachts also touts V-bottom features on its Valhalla models.

Hunt passed away in 1978, but plenty of major boat brands continue to use Ray Hunt Design, which is still run by those who worked with Hunt, and Hunt’s name and the deep-V continue to appear on vessels.

Bob Dougherty

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Bob Dougherty oversaw design and engineering of the boats at Boston Whaler, earning him the nickname “Mr. Unsinkable.” He also launched the EdgeWater and Everglades brands.

Dougherty’s biggest contribution to boating as we know it today was arguably the way he refined the closed-cell foam flotation technique of boatbuilding. He created the Rapid Molded Core Assembly Process, which uses foam to fill the void between a boat’s hull and deck. This technique is what makes the boats “unsinkable,” as well as quieter and less likely to vibrate underway. It’s still in use today.

“He was a true ‘maker’ who could design and build in almost any material: fiberglass, wood, metal, plastic,” Peter Truslow, president of EdgeWater Power Boats, told our sister magazine, Soundings Trade Only, after Dougherty died in 2016. “Best of all, he was really good at explaining how it all worked.”

William Garden

William Garden was, in a word, prolific. Over 6,000 boats were built to his designs and Mystic Seaport lists 674 designs in its William Garden Collection, everything from workboats, schooners, cutters and motorsailers to sportfishermen, express cruisers and motoryachts.

An expert draftsman whose sometimes whimsical drawings inspired awe, Garden was among the first to design comfortable, always-in-style trawler-type boats for family cruising. The Willard Vega 36, which premiered in 1961, was a sedan-style flybridge cruiser that was ahead of its time and inspired the low-speed recreational trawler yachts that would follow by the thousands in the decades to come. Garden designed boats that were practical and comfortable, seaworthy, beautiful and in all sizes, including Owl (see below). In the 1950s he drew the 60-foot sailboat Oceanus to entice his wife to spend more time on the waters near their Seattle home. Sports Illustrated wrote that he gave the deckhouse “six large side windows, 6-foot 4-inch headroom and a white acoustic ceiling 9 feet by 12, a wood-burning stove to drive out the Northwest damp, a coffee table, divan and rattan basket chairs and a door that leads right out into a cockpit big enough to hold 10 people.”

Garden recognized early on that boats had to be comfortable for people other than the skipper—a trend now widely recognized.

Bruce King

The Hinckley Picnic Boat, which premiered in the mid-1990s, launched a new class of Down East-style dayboat that’s still sought after today. Its designer, Bruce King, combined classic looks with a JetStick helm and water-jet propulsion, giving boaters the best of style and performance.

King designed many of Ericson’s fiberglass racers and cruisers, drew boats for Islander, created the breathtakingly beautiful Whitehawk, and a series of very large sailing superyachts.

At the heart of his designs was pure beauty. As he told the Sailing Hall of Fame: “Technology is fleeting; it is constantly changing. Aesthetic beauty is timeless, and it alone provides the motivation for preservation. It is hoped that as present technology gives way to the new, we will continue to be able to impart to our designs an appeal, both tangible and intangible, that will allow them to endure.”

King achieved that goal with the Hinckley Picnic Boat, which 30 years later continues to inspire boatbuilders around the world, including Hinckley, whose designs still get a huge dose of inspiration from King’s original Picnic Boat, long after the designer retired.

Don Aronow

Don Aronow’s name is synonymous with high-performance powerboat racing. He founded the Formula brand in the early 1960s, followed by Magnum Marine, Donzi and Cigarette Racing Team. As the Florida Sports Hall of Fame notes, Aronow’s boats won more than 350 offshore races, and he was a two-time world champion as well as a three-time U.S. champion.

All of that speed got the attention of everyday powerboaters, who wanted to know why their boats couldn’t go faster too, so they could feel the rush on the weekends. Aronow’s racing fame brought a whole new level of popularity to higher-speed power cruising.

“What started way back in 1964 lives on today as the runaway most classic high-performance boat of all time,” Donzi Marine proclaims. “An adrenaline pump of excitement is guaranteed every time you take to the water in the new Limited Edition Donzi 64-24.”

Today, Aronow’s need for speed is shared by others, as boat manufacturers regularly pitch production models that can bust 50 mph and beyond.

Doug Zurn

Doug Zurn has made a measurable impact with powerboats that are both pretty and well-performing. He founded his design firm in 1993, and has since turned out more than 450 sail and power models. Zurn Yacht Design has contributed to the success of many brands, including Lyman-Morse, Hylas, MJM Yachts and Sunreef.

Zurn made a splash in 2004 with the Shelter Island Commuter, a collaboration among the designer, Coecles Harbor Marine and the singer-songwriter Billy Joel. The Grammy winner needed a way to commute from his home on Oyster Bay, Long Island, to New York City. Zurn gave the commuter-style yacht an appearance that he described as harking back to “a bygone era of Long Island Sound commuter boats” from the 1920s and ’30s.

Zurn had a similar impact when he designed Joel’s 57-foot, 45-knot Vendetta, with a goal of making it the fastest commuter yacht on Long Island Sound. 

Rod Johnstone

When Rod Johnstone was inducted into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, he was quoted as saying: “It pleases me to know an average person can sail a boat of mine and get the same kick out of it that I do. A lot of non-racers sail our boats.”

Johnstone was talking about J/Boats, which he founded with his brother Bob in 1977 and which has since built around 10,000 boats.

Johnstone built his first boat, the 24-foot-long Ragtime, in his garage while working as an ad salesman for Soundings. That boat won many races during the summer of 1976, creating the J/24, which is still the most popular recreational offshore keelboat in the world. J/Boats built 5,500 of them and has built thousands of other sailboats along the way.

When asked about his designs, Johnstone said a boat is a thing that water needs to get around. “For me, it’s easy,” he once said. “I’ve always figured that out from my experience sailing.”

Jack Hargrave

When Willis Slane wanted to build a fiberglass boat to tackle North Carolina’s rough offshore waters, he turned to designer Jack Hargrave, who had gotten his start working for John Rybovich. Hargrave drew what became the first-ever Hatteras yacht: the 41-foot Knit Wits. It became the first production boat bigger than 30 feet to be built in fiberglass—proof that the material made sense for production boatbuilding.

In the 1950s, Hargrave had already made a name for himself in the bigger-boat world by designing the 90-foot Burger Seven Seas. Hargrave’s own company became known as the top U.S. yacht design firm, working with multiple builders. Today, it lives on as Hargrave Custom Yachts, and Hargrave is remembered as “the man who put America on the water.”

His vessels embodied the idea that good looks mattered as much as good performance, a belief he summarized by saying, “If both gals can cook, why not marry the pretty one?”

John H. Deknatel

John Deknatel joined Philip L. Rhodes’ naval architecture firm after studying at the Harvard School of Design. He went to work for Ray Hunt in 1963, assumed leadership of the firm in 1969 and spent more than half a century perfecting C. Raymond Hunt’s deep-V hull shape, a job he continues to do today.

As Deknatel explained to Soundings in 2012, boats like the Bertram 31, which premiered in 1961 and used Hunt’s deep-V, were known as great rough-water boats, but modern deep-V boats are optimized for specific missions. “Is it going to be a 25-knot working pilot boat that is active 24 hours a day year-round or a 35-knot pleasure boat that is going to run 25 knots most of the time?” he said. Knowing how to tweak the hull shape for the purpose has made Deknatel beloved among boaters of all kinds.

His influence can be seen in many designs today, including powerboats often described as Down East cruisers. One of those is the Eastbay 38, which premiered in 1993, and is the boat Deknatel has said he’s most proud of in his career.

Michael Peters

Since the early 1970s, Michael Peters and his firm have designed more than 500 boats, working with brands such as Azimut, Bertram, Chris-Craft, Hinckley, CL Yachts and Valhalla Boatworks.

Don Aronow was one of Peters’ early clients. Peters is known for advancing the stepped hull concept, which was first invented by Englishman Rev. Ramus in 1872 and uses notched indentations to break up the boat’s bottom surface.

When executed correctly, stepped hulls reduce wetted surface and drag by mixing some of the water that flows under the bottom with air, to create pressure points that provide more lift and regulate the trim angle. The idea is to achieve performance that other boats can’t match.

As Peters told Soundings in 2011: “Zodiac builds an 11-meter RIB to our design, and they took one of them on a 10-day, 1,700-mile excursion through the Northwest Passage. They averaged 30 knots threading though icebergs, often in very rough water, while crossing the north shore of Canada, and never spun the boat out.”

The stepped hull is a favorite for offshore center consoles and with the U.S. military. Peters used it in designs for the Navy Seals, who embody the idea of go-anywhere, do-anything capability.

Ted Hood

Ted Hood won the America’s Cup in 1974 as skipper of Courageous, earned a reputation for designing and building fast boats, and made sails, creating one of the most trusted names in sailmaking.

As the Herreshoff Marine Museum noted during his induction into the America’s Cup Hall of Fame, Hood produced “spectacularly successful spinnakers for the early America’s Cup 12-Meter yachts. Then, his mainsails and jibs became the standard, made from state-of-the-art Dacron fabrics developed by Hood Yacht Systems.”

The man also knew how to make and repair boats that people loved. He went on to create the Ted Hood Marine Complex in Rhode Island, where he offered service and repairs. And he founded Little Harbor Marine, which built Whisperjet boats. They were Down East-style express cruisers that paired his love of fast cruising with traditional styling.

Hinckley Yachts eventually bought Little Harbor, after which Hood founded Ted Hood Yachts to build Coastal Explorers and Expedition designs.

Tom Fexas

Attendees at the 1978 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show got an eyeful with Tom Fexas’ Midnight Lace 44. It had a long, slim, black hull that stood out amid the bulky white cabin cruisers that dominated the marketplace. Cheoy Lee put a fiberglass version of Midnight Lace into production, and today, several dozen of the boats are considered collector’s items.

His success with Midnight Lace allowed Fexas to build a career that packed all kinds of boats into his portfolio, including mega-yachts, sportfishermen and trawlers from 17 to 200 feet long. He was never into sailing—he called those vessels “blow boats”—and, as a columnist for our sister magazine Power & Motoryacht, he enjoyed taking a poke at boaters who preferred to hoist sails.

Fexas designed boats that were built by Palmer & Johnson, Grand Banks, Abeking & Rasmussen and Cheoy Lee, but Midnight Lace also made him popular with European clients, which caused some to credit him with creating a retro motoryacht style that others referred to as the Italian Style.

Always, Fexas rejected boats that he felt looked like white blobs. He aimed for impactful style, something many boat designers still strive to achieve as well as he did. 

This article was originally published in the January 2024 issue.