In the meantime I had the pleasure of being the first person to trapeze in a FD in Portugal . I could hardly pull that genoa by myself !! What a beautiful boat that was.

Less successful was my adventure in a “Star”, being too young, too light and not enough experience ! but that boat remained my dream boat to this day…

Luckily we had many older Portuguese sailors quite good internationally so I learned a lot by studying them, something I used to do quite professionally for such a young kid. Asked lots of questions and watched their preparations before a race.

Some years later I was sent to Scotland to study Naval Architecture and sailing in bigger boats became the norm. First in a half tonner “Scampi III” and later a One Tonner “Billycan” . By 1973 I did my first Admiral’s Cup.  Followed that by becoming a Navigator and sailing all over the World, also crewing on “Windward passage” ,“Equation” “Saudade” and so on.. phenomenal boats !

After some glorious years working with Ron Holland, I designed “Justine III”  and won the One-Ton Cup with 6 bullets , first one ever on a World Championship since 1896.  The rest is quite a long story…including the party consuming 159 bottles of champagne ! Joe English son was baptised on the cup the next day !

Throughout my professional life I always liked to design smaller boats. More difficult and less margin, or no margin for mistakes.. I recall wining the “National 18” national championship in Ireland and designing also the wining “Flying Fifteen”.  Also helped design a new mast section for the “Star”.