Yacht designer Bob Perry is the mind behind some of the most popular and enduring cruising boats sailing on Puget Sound and waters worldwide, from Tayanas to Valiants, Babas to Nordics. Credited for starting the “performance cruising” movement that merged sailing speed with offshore cruising, Perry, 63, also designs custom yachts and has won numerous awards for his work. Three Sheets Northwest caught up with the prolific designer, who’s based in Port Susan, about an hour north of Seattle, before he headed off for the annual Perry Design Rendezvous in Port Ludlow.

How many boats have you designed?
How many different designs have I done? Three hundred, maybe. I started numbering them and then I sort of got out of sequence and dropped it. I started at number 60, so it was always off and it was sort of irrelevant after a while. I don’t forget them. I don’t need numbers to remember them.

Which of your boats are you the most proud of?
In terms of owner satisfaction and miles under the keel and the boat having done a great variety of things, I think Night Runner (42’) and Icon (65’)—those two custom boats. I have another one in California called Stealth Chicken (55.5’) that’s a beautiful boat. In terms of production boats, the Islander 28, the Valiant 40, Baba 40, Nordic 44 … I don’t have any one particular boat that is my favorite. I tend to think of them in terms of owner satisfaction. They’re all different and they’re designed for other people. You just do your best on every one. People ask, ‘Which one is your favorite?’ You sort of like the one you’re working on at the time.

Is there a perfect boat for you?
No. I can pretty much enjoy any boat as long as it’s reasonably good-looking. I don’t like ugly boats. If a boat has reasonably good lines, I understand the boat and I understand why it won’t go to weather and I don’t hold that against it. I can sail a wide variety of boats and enjoy the experience. I tend to favor smaller boats because I’m not mechanically inclined. Complex systems intimidate me.

I prefer simple boats. I like to sail by myself. That’s the best way to sail, I think. You don’t need much. I like to reduce it to a very simple exercise. I like to try to do it the way the old guys did, without all the modern conveniences, just to prove I can do it—without a GPS, without a watermaker, without a windlass, all those things sailors today take for granted.

How do you define good performance?
Boat has to go to weather well. Boat has to be well-balanced. It doesn’t have to be stiff, but it shouldn’t be excessively tender. Good helm balance, ability to point 30 degrees to the apparent wind, and good velocity made good. A good keel, nice, deep draft and the ability to be forgiving and take care of itself when it needs to. The real measure it, how does it to go weather? Any boat can get blown downwind, but to go to weather well and have a beautifully balanced helm and good manners and good, predictable behavior, it rewards your effort.

A poor-performing boat, you work harder to get somewhere. I look at a lot of boats people sail and I marvel that people still sail after spending time on these boats. If I was new to sailing and was sailing on some of these boats, I’d probably give up sailing. I don’t understand the appeal if the only thing you’ve sailed on is a pig.

Care to name names?
No.

What type of projects are you working on at the moment?
A motorboat for a guy in Maine, a 55-foot motorboat. Just getting started on a 60-foot long daysailer and I’m halfway through building a 20-foot custom boat for a doctor in New Orleans that’s occupying most of my time right now because the builder’s building very fast. It’s a little boat with a carbon bowsprit and a nice, deep keel, but above the water, you think you’re looking at an old boat.

What are your favorite types of projects to work on?
My favorite projects, and these are probably 85 percent of projects I get, would be projects that are sort of aesthetically driven. The client has an image, he sees a picture of a boat on the water with him in it and he can’t find that boat anywhere that he sees in his head. It might be a hybrid of several boats that he’s seen over the years, or it might be something more normal.

I enjoy doing traditional boats. I love doing boats that look traditional but sail really well. If I had one type that was my favorite, I would call it the wolf in sheep’s clothing. It looks like an antique above the water but it sails very well.

How has the recession affected your work?
It’s affected it big time. One of my biggest projects ever was sort of put on hold. Production boats have died. If you were a young guy trying to be a yacht designer today, going out on your own, I don’t think you could do it. I just don’t know where you’d get the clients.

Finding the right cruising boat can be quite an undertaking. What advice would you offer to people embarking on that path?
I would advise people to hire me as a consultant. When people will call and say, ‘I’m looking at three boats and two of them are your designs and I have a bunch of questions,’ my response is, ‘Take those questions to the broker who’s being paid to sell you a boat.’ I’ve been doing this since I was 14 years old. I want respect. I’m not the free link in the chain of you getting the boat.

You pay your $500 consultation fee and I’ll be your best pal, I’ll be your best advocate, I’ll be your Dutch uncle. I’ll open your eyes and I’ll be the one person in the process with nothing to gain from you buying one particular boat. I can be very objective. I don’t lean toward my own designs. I know pretty much all the boats that are out there and if I don’t, I know somebody I can call to get the information, one of my cronies. So that’s a good place to start.

People can be so tunnel vision when they’re looking for a boat and rule out a lot of good boats based on somewhat superficial aesthetic differences or styling mannerisms or whatever. I try to open their eyes to see a broader range of possibilities. The other thing is, keep it simple. A typical cruising boat today is a very complex machine and a lot of people spend too much time in harbors trying to get something fixed. They want solar cells, they want a wind generator, a genset, big alternators, huge battery banks. Weight is always the enemy on a sailboat, unless it’s on the bottom of your keel. Anywhere else, it’s the enemy.

What are the most common mistakes that boat owners with your designs? (i.e., in modifying or customizing their boats)
They don’t usually modify them. If I draw a sloop, people want to convert it to a cutter because they think that makes them safer. People like to add that inner forestay. And just overweight—too much stuff.

How are advances in materials changing boat design?
You have more options in terms of weight. You can have a 60-foot boat that weighs 16,000 pounds and get away with it, whereas 30 years ago that boat would have weighed 30,000 pounds. Modern materials have opened up a whole new world of light, lighter and ultra-light displacements.

You have to be a little more careful with modern core materials to make sure they’re adhered to the skin. With the skins so thin now, there’s just no wiggle room if the core isn’t perfectly adhered to the skin everywhere. On an old boat with a really thick skin you could get away with it, because the skins were probably overbuilt to begin with. But with a modern boat, you can’t get away with it. You can’t have delamination.

What do you think about the popularity of catamarans?
I like all boats. I like some of ‘em, I hate some of ‘em. It depends on what they look like. It depends on how they sail. I have no problem with multihulls. I started sailing multihulls when I was 16 years old. I just take each boat as an individual.

What are the biggest trends in sailboat design these days?
Sailboats cover such a huge range. On one end you have these giant catamarans for the America’s Cup. You’ve got Moth dinghies that sail entirely on hydrofoils, clear of the water. You have Valiant 42s. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got big, heavy cruising cats. There are trends in each genre. For typical production monohulls, the trend is toward more and more interior volume. Certainly, nobody has any overhangs anymore because of a given length overall, if you do away with the overhangs you get more interior volume.

What’s it like for you to go to a Perry Rendezvous and see all these boats you’ve designed and their owners?
Makes me feel good. It’s humbling and satisfying. I’m not a physical therapist, I’m not an orthopedic surgeon, I’m not an aid worker in Africa. I design toys for wealthy people, so there’s nothing very noble in what I do. But I get a little satisfaction from seeing happy owners.

Do you go to any Perry Rendezvous besides the one in Port Ludlow?
I’ve never been to any of them. People have threatened to get me to them, but I prefer not to fly these days if I don’t have to. I’ve done enough of that for one lifetime. I have a beautiful house up here on the water and a real boat, a Boston whaler with 115 horsepower in it, and I don’t want to go anywhere.