Warwick Collins, the British novelist and screenwriter, yacht designer and evolutionary theorist who died on Feb. 10, was remembered for living a full life by yacht designer Dave Hollom for inspiring him.
“I also owe him a huge debt of gratitude, as it was he … who had sufficient faith in my ideas and design skills to have me installed as one of the lead designers,” Hollom writes in a remembrance published on The Daily Sail website.
Collins invented and patented the tandem keel, which was conceived to create high performance at low draft, but which also remains one of the radical keels in the America’s Cup, according to his biography on Wikipedia.
He continued his interest in yacht design with an innovation in hull design called the Universal Hull. This fused together two classic hull types (the long, thin, easily-driven hull and the beamy commodious hull) in a form which yielded the chief virtues of both types of hull. The two hulls are joined above the waterline by a ledge which also acts as a spray ledge.
The resulting shape is easily driven because of the long, thin underwater shape but enjoys the accommodation space (above the waterline) of a beamy hull.
Click here for Hollom’s remembrance.
