Few design offices compare with the Humphreys office when it comes to round-the-world experience. Direct design experience has been gained from:

• The Whitbread Race (now the Volvo Ocean Race)
• The BT Global Challenge Race
• The Vendée Globe Race
• The Hong Kong Challenge
• The Europa 2000 Race

as well as less strenuous cruising circumnavigations, such as by the 128ft Cyrano de Bergerac.

Two Whitbread racers have been designed, one the IOR Maxi Rothmans (1989/90 race) and the other the Whitbread 60 Dolphin and Youth (1993/94 race), whose average crew age was 22 at the time of the event.

The Humphreys Office was commissioned in 1996 by Sir Chay Blyth to design the second generation of BT Global Challenge yachts for the 2000 race. The twelve boat fleet competing in what is promoted as the world's toughest yacht race - a "wrong-way" circumnavigation - all safely completed the race. Also in 2000, Ellen MacArthur's Kingfisher, a design produced by the Humphreys Office in collaboration with Owen Clarke Design and French singlehander Alain Gautier, finished second in the Vendée Globe (Gautier’s first boat was a Humphreys Half Tonner).

Other Humphreys circumnavigators are the IOR 50 Blizzard, under the banner of the Austrian Whitbread Challenge, in the Hong Kong Challenge and the Gib'Sea Master 48 Best of Boingo in the Europa 2000 race.

Humphreys Yacht Design
Lower Seaforth House
Bath Road
Lymington
Hampshire
SO41 3RW
UK
Tel. +44 (0)1590 679344
Fax. +44 (0)1590 671651
info@humphreysdesign.com