The name Pete Melvin might mean little to you if you are a big boat mono hull sailor, but if you sail multi's then Pete Melvin is one of your gods! Very talented, Pete has accomplished much in this sport, but he is mostly known for doing one really, really big thing. How big? How does designing, along with partner Gino Morrelli, the 125' Playstation sound? Is that big enough fo' yo ass?

There is plenty more big stuff to know about Playstation and Pete, so we fired our ten questions his way.

 

Pete, give our readers a brief on who you are and how you got there.

PM:
I began my sailing career in Optimist dinghies in Florida. I went on to win several Optimist Nationals and then started sailing 420's and 470's and won the US Youth Championships a few times and a World Youth Championship in 1977, as well as national titles in 420's, 470's and other classes. I went to Boston University and obtained a degree is Aerospace Engineering. I sailed in college and we won several national championships and the Fowle Trophy my senior year.

I was hired by McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, CA after graduating and worked there for five years in several aircraft design positions, including my last two years in Advanced Design, where you dream up and analyze all sorts of futuristic aircraft.

After moving to Long Beach, I started sailing Tornado catamarans and we won the 1988 Olympic trials and went to the Olympics in Korea but did not medal. I sailed in the ProSail professional sailing circuit in 1989 and won the Hobie 21 series for the year.

In 1990 I quit my job at McDonnell Douglas to skipper the Little Americas' Cup C class catamaran for a syndicate formed in San Diego. Gino Morrelli had been hired to design the boat and I ended up working on the design, particularly the wing sail, and also helped build the boat. After the Little AC was over, I started consulting for various boat builders and doing other design and engineering work on my own.

In 1992 Gino and I decided to join forces and formed our design business. We started out designing mostly performance oriented multihull sailboats and have diversified into cruising cats and power catamarans of all types.

I still do a lot of competitive sailing, mostly in all sorts of multihulls we design and occasionally in monohulls such as the Melges 24 and 505. In 1997 I won the A Class Catamaran Worlds in my own design and I sail on PlayStation as often as possible.

Obviously designing PlayStation was a monumental task. There are a number of successful European multihull designers to chose from. Tell us how you guys got the order from Steve Fossett.

PM:
Steve Fossett purchased the 60' racing trimaran Lakota in the early 1990's and brought the boat to California. We helped him with design modifications to make the boat faster and more reliable, and also raced with him. When Steve decided to build PlayStation, he talked to most of our competition and ultimately decided that we were the guys to go with.

When it became apparent that there were problems with the boat, primarily it's tendency to bury the bows, was your first reaction. "Oh shit, we fucked up?"

PM:
Our decision to add more length to the boat was based on several factors. We wanted to be able to push the boat harder in advanced sea states. The biggest problem was that we had to slow down whenever the forward beam started to contact the tops of waves. All the boats built for The Race have this problem at some point. Since we added some length to the boat and also raised the forward beam, the boat has been totally transformed and is now significantly better at handling big seas and also has a higher top-end speed.

As far as a tendency to bury the bows in her original configuration, I think this has been totally overblown. Before we added length to the hulls, the boat had captured the 24 hour record and been across the North Atlantic five times. We only really stuffed the boat hard once. That was in December 1999 on our first Transatlantic record attempt, when the wind increased from about 25 knots to over 60 knots in a matter of minutes. We didn't have time to put a reef in before we became totally overpowered. I must admit that after that little episode, we did some serious thinking about the design of the boat and how to successfully manage the sailplan.

PlayStation has set some mighty impressive records, yet it's only real head to head battle with other huge multi's in The Race, she was forced to retire. Are we likely to see PS square off against one of it's rivals in the future?

PM:
Until there is an organized race for these maxi cats, I do not think we will line up against the others. All these boats are now focused on setting records, so there is little chance we will see any head to head competition until perhaps The Race 2004.

In terms of business, what has PS done for you guys?

PM:
That is a bit difficult to measure. You don't sign contracts to design 125' racing cats every day. We have received a lot of publicity for the PlayStation project so that should be good in the long run. We do have some new fast cruising and maxi-cruising cats on the drawing board and the PlayStation project certainly helped solidify our name as leading designers of multihull yachts. More than half of our work is designing power catamarans and that side of the business has been growing steadily over the years.

What do you think of the current multihull climate in the US, from racing, production, and an acceptance perspective?

PM:
Mutihulls are a growing market segment and this trend should continue as more people try the boats and some of the old conservatisms fade away. The designs have been improving at a relatively rapid pace for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is that in multihull racing, there are fewer rules, which allows for pure innovation.

Multihull racing in the US has always been strong in the beach cat classes but offshore racing has never reached critical mass. The Corsair trimarans are the best place to go fleet racing on something larger than a beach cat. In Europe, sponsorship drives most of the offshore racing, such as the ORMA 60' trimaran circuit and The Race type maxi-cats. Until we can interest US companies in this type of racing sponsorship, we will not see that type of racing here.

The grand prix type offshore multihulls are very fast and require a highly trained crew to race them successfully and safely. Most of the racers in the European circuits are professionals. I think in the US, we need a different type of boat and racing to attract owners. I think we need some racer/cruiser classes that the owners can cruise and that have a higher level of comfort than a pure racer. Most multihulls fall into the category of pure cruiser or pure racer. Now that the multihull market is maturing, there are a few designs available that have relatively high performance and can be cruised comfortably.

Given that Europe is where nearly all of the offshore multihull development is taking place, how have you Yankee interlopers been received, and have you gotten much business there?

PM:
We are more well known in Europe than we are here. However, we are somewhat geographically undesirable so we do not seam to get much business from there.

 

What are your latest projects?

PM:
We have quite a few new projects in the works these days. The latest launch was a 62' racer/cruiser cat built for Peter Johnstone. This boat turned out fantastic. It has four staterooms and performs very well. We hit over twenty knots the first day of sea trials. We have orders for two more of these. We have several other cruising cats being built around the world and a constant stream of power catamarans being designed and built.

When you look at the world of big boat racing in the US, what do you see?

Pete sent this photo with the rest so, here it is

PM:
Keelboat racing is at a mature stage, and not particularly interesting to me. The racing itself can still be fun and with the advent of IMS the boats are significantly better than in the IOR days but you still have the problem of boats being refined to achieve a better rating, and not necessarily to sail better. The rules limitations really hamper true development and innovation. You see big leaps in sailing qualities in the open and development classes, which are mostly based overseas.

Do you guys have any interest in entering the monohull racing arena?

PM:
We might be interested at some point, and more interested in open or development classes. That is the area where our brains have been trained.