John Shuttleworth Yacht Designs Ltd

John Shuttleworth learned to sail when he was nine years old, and built his first boat, a small sailing dinghy, only three years later. He cruised and raced multihulls extensively from 1971 to 1976, building his first multihull, a 40 ft/12.2 m trimaran in 1974.

Between 1976 and 1978 he worked for Derek Kelsall, designing multihulls and monohulls, including GREAT BRITAIN IV, in which Chay Blyth won the Round Britain Race in 1978, and V.S.D. for Eugene Reguidel, which won the Transat en Double a year later.

John Shuttleworth founded his own company, John Shuttleworth Yacht Designs Ltd, in 1980. The 65 ft trimaran BRITTANY FERRIES GB, designed in the same year and sailed by two well-known English yachtsmen (Chay Blyth and Rob James), won the 1981 Transat Race by 16 hours and broke the East West transatlantic record.

Through his background in engineering and computer design, he was able to develop innovative, computer-generated yacht structures, producing lighter, stiffer and stronger multihulls. This academic approach to boat engineering makes John Shuttleworth a regular on the symposia circuit. He has also published many papers and articles, and contributes to several multihull magazines.

In 1988 John was invited by the New Zealand Challenge to coordinate and oversee their computer performance prediction and data gathering methods for the America's Cup. He conducted an extensive tank test programme, probably the most advanced computer performance prediction work to date [2006] on multihulls.

By 2004, John Shuttleworth had designed more than 50 multihulls, many of them racing successes, including GREAT AMERICAN, FLEURY MICHON VI, ELLE ET VIRE, ZEEPOES, and SHOCKWAVE. One Shuttleworth design philosophy is "form follows function," leading to the rounded deck edges and flared hulls that characterise his cruising designs, many of which are sailing around the world.