The Riptide 55 was my first keel boat design (1994).  She was designed and built for George Thurtle of Seattle WA who wanted a high performance offshore family cruising yacht.  George is a very open-minded client who encouraged me to take the design to its logical conclusion, and I was perfectly willing to do so.  She was very innovative for her time, with such characteristics as: water ballast, a swept spreader rig with no permanent backstay,  a carbon mast and carbon boom attached to a waist high hollow mast “pod” (which provide extra light and ventilation below), a long sprit with masthead asymmetrical chute, a long curved traveler without vang, twin rudders, a chined hull, swim step with dinghy garage, and a bow extension which puts the anchor roller and sprit well forward of the stem and provides ample working deck in way of the forestay.  Many (but not all) of these features later became widespread in racing and cruising circles.  Eric created this rendering using Robert McNeel’s Rhinoceros (called Accu-Model at the time), which was either the first or second commercial project done with the now-popular CAD modeling software.

-Paul

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