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all right here we are well hello everyone and welcome to another uh session or insulting of dog talk today we have i'm very pleased to have ron allen joining us uh today to talk all things about boat and his career uh in the voting world so let's go back to i want to talk about you're right so you were at the beginning you were bound by the ira rules trying to build within the space but then eventually you start getting into in the first 100 and 203 foot vote where you were now leaving it was more like it was a sailboat cruising racing sailboat my take on all your challenges as you said you were bringing people on the table how did you approach your people there you were bringing when you were take like when you were doing these crazy spars and you were pushing the boundary where people didn't think was possible how did you introduce and bring these different stakeholders and not have them like glaze over it was it your brand and they thought okay he's pulled it off before we can keep pulling it off how did you bring these people into the full to be willing to push their own limits like how did you get everyone to be on board to tackle these crazy what appeared to be impossible challenges i i'm thinking that my comment about no don't be afraid to ask for help is a big influence on this subject um because you know the sailboats the design and building of sailboats is the most complex thing humans ever made airplanes piece of cake static high static speed through the air you know sailboats have got to encompass totally diverse conditions so it's the most complicated thing you can design train easy you know cars easy so uh because i had no trouble asking for help i could get up to speed quickly in areas that i wouldn't be familiar with there you go and that was that's it i mean it's crazy because i mean obviously you have doubters and what even surprising is there doesn't the test was the first sale like you think about product development now and you think about probably you know that but now the owners are on board like they're putting out remember they put out the spinnaker for the first time and then you were in the netherlands on that lake and they're like let's just go and it was like there's no testing there's not like oh let's send you know the young kids to try it out you know like let's you guys figure it out try back give me feedback then we'll bring the boss on board no i mean the boss is on board inaugural let's put out the sale let's see what happen it seems like everybody was wrong with take risks that was coming from the selling experience you know now you could become a successful yacht designer especially america's cup without having sailed you know because you know about foils and the boats that i was doing oh still in place are very influenced by my personal experience selling yachts across the ocean so i mean that's a that's a fun story though that was through it's about whirlwind the first hundred footer i did and will you have a spinnaker on this boat or not there's some huge discussions over the three-year design and build period and the owner courageously said let's order one anyway we might never use it very often but what the hell so that first day sailing we couldn't resist i love it i think that's why i said audacious could be the name of the book it was like let's try let's see i i think it's it's something that's just recurring on so many different themes even i thought racing how the crews of the boats that you were designing were also audacious in their tactics right they weren't winning races because they were just being predictable they were also willing to take different tactics that might look crazy but again willing to take chances to win it sounds like that was another sort of theme that i saw from the crews they were they were just not settling they were constantly wanting to win and finding a way to win yeah and and jeff i say quite often if you want to be a successful racing art designer you need two two things a bloody good sound maker and a bloody good crew yeah the the boat is an influence but actually without a good sales and crew you ain't gonna win races yeah and that's where it seems like a lot of people in your design studio was getting an opportunity even family brother your brother-in-law uh we're getting a chance to go out there being there on different boats so everybody i guess everyone was staying current pushing the boundaries on the boats that you were building well not building designing yeah that was really interesting as well so where do you see are you feeling that innovation today and within the racing design world is keeping at the same pace that was happening like you were saying in the heydays in the late 70s 80s are you feeling that people today are also pushing the envelope are you still excited about the innovation that you're seeing others do and other peers how do you feel about where things are and where things are going on the sailing front well there's still as there was then there's still a separation between the racing performance requirements and then this huge market that emerged for big private cruising arts and that [Music] there's pretty big differences now now when you ask this question you're going to go hey what about america's cup what happened look look what happened so these foiling they're more flying than they are sailing so that's i find that very interesting i'm not involved in it i'm not going to do those boats but you have to say the innovation took a big jump as it used to too by america's cup see america's cup has crazy budgets sailing yacht building and design doesn't really have any r d budget so you you're not going to get huge jumps in performance like you do with america's cup where there's real money involved so that's the difference is the so you're what i'm hearing you say is that the the cruising yachts have incremental changes you're pushing the boundaries but because you don't have the r d budget you you can't go it's got to work i mean at the end of the day you're pushing the boundaries but you don't want to fail epically either um yeah that's that's something to consider do you feel that i mean i was reading your article or the chapter on the systems that you did on m5 or mirabella later on i think it was became m5 i think is what i had and you're i was looking at all the different systems and then that's where now i guess that's probably where you now this is completely different from understanding how the boat's going to behave you're now being challenged on the systems from like propulsion you know the water use all these different things that are another layer above and beyond the performance of the boat to meet the performance of the boat right to keep the weight down how was that transition did you find interest in the systems because they seem to be a big part of those boats did you find that interesting as much as the the dynamics of the racing boats i think the timing was the biggest influence so i'd i'd done this racing thing for 15 years and i think i was just ready for something different and because the the world got richer as i mentioned all these big one-off custom yachts it was an attractive design area to be and quite frankly you make more money as a designer undoing the big one-off boats then you do lots of little race boats so that was a kind of conscious decision to dive into these hundred foot plus private yachts yeah it seems and that's where again this i mean we do the same thing here but i'm in a much smaller we're doing lithium it sounds like you were using a lot of things that are now pushing the boundaries like you were even talking about led lights like at 2008 2009 you're pushing the boundaries and i'm seeing this now over 2021 and we're seeing the trickle down like there are certain aspects of that that then start applying to cruising boats so that innovation is in the end not doesn't seem approachable to everyday people but it does come down and does benefit because lithium now is not uncommon anymore and it's you know people are using it so the early adopters really paved the way for the rest of us um was that a big part of your design shop having all those systems built were they all spec or was the yard doing more that became a specialist area and so some of those systems area was more the builder responsibility and their subcontractors so i don't know about electrics so i haven't been very influential in my yards on the electrical stuff that that's become more of a builder specialist subcontractor type of thing yeah a big part today especially really big part um tell me about your own vote i read the chapter and i thought that chapter was also again to the theme of despite everything that was happening around you in the slowdown you still committed to building your own boat uh at a time when things were not didn't they weren't perfect for you at that moment and you did it tell me how that process of finally coming and designing your own boat and what was it that was important to you and like how did you go about because everyone dreams about doing something for themselves uh how did you go about with all your knowledge deciding what you were going to do for your own boat the first time i knew it was a 72-footer that was being built in new zealand yeah how was that well i i felt i needed to do this even though i couldn't afford it i was lucky to have a partner that agreed that what i what i would like to do he would like to do too so that made it possible when i look at the boat i did which is called gold douglas it's a pretty conservative boat it's a you know there aren't that much high-end innovative yacht design things it's fairly classic i mean it's it's unique in as much as the rig you can sell it on your own and that says a lot for a 70-footer but i'm kind of surprised how conservative the boat turned out ah it's a nice boat it's classic i i have this picture in my mind it's a real test on how good your yacht design capability is when you get in your dinghy and you roll away from your anchored yacht do you like what you see a hundred percent a hundred percent yeah so my gold nervous boat is perfect for that but it's not using innovation to the extent it could have but it's a trade-off right i mean you know you don't have to push the envelope i saw the lines of the picture in the lines look absolutely gorgeous um and you even have uh inside hell and the raised pilot house right uh inside that boat i think if i'm looking if i remember the images but yeah yeah that was also that's also big nowadays as well and you're right and you talked about the crew you know the difference between a racing and a cruising sailboat where the visibility so was that was that a big distraction for you building your own boat was it hard for you to think about other things while you were building your own or did you just know the concept and it was just more a matter of execution yeah i was doing no race boats at this time so my attention was on personal cruising yachts and the there was a business angle on the gold doubloons project we built two of them and so we sold one and you know so it was a business feature as much as a uh desire to have my own boat venture oh my most of my sailing and flying has been with other people's planes and boats they say that's the best way to go boating right i don't necessarily agree i do i do have uh i do sort of enjoy my own boat but yeah being on the water at the end of the day it's an incredible experience did you do you consider yourself a competitive person do you like do you like you consider like winning yeah i got to say yes and i i i the biggest test of this was the first time i took a girlfriend or a wife i didn't remember which sailing and so they they have been sailing with me for fun and then i took her on a race they saw me as some crazy the change of character is embarrassing no nonsense no nonsense just driven i mean you uh i i can see it now looking back how i would give a girlfriend a full sense of security about this is a nice guy and they get me on the road because i'm gonna beat those no matter how it's funny because you read your book even though you seem very driven to win the book doesn't again the way that your your competition level is really never taking it almost personally you it seems like what you would want right you enjoy the journey you're pushing for favorable results and you learn from your mistakes and then you keep innovating it's from the outside it looks like a good way to do it because the journey has to be part of it like you know otherwise it's it's too hard uh you know you beat yourself so much there's so many factors at play it looks like so many factors yeah it's really it's really amazing now you also at the end of the one of the last the last few chapters of the book you're condensing everything that you didn't talk in the first chapters it looked like there's there's so much going on you also ended up going and building motor yachts you were saying started off the paragraphs that you know you went down to the dark side how was that for you designing i think it was marco polo the one that was um i remember the shot in hong kong the picture in the book how was that for you designing a motor yacht after designing so many sailboats well the first reflection on on this is that i'm a really slow learner because the motorboats are 95 of the market so it totally blows me away that i have done my 50-year career in under 10 of the boat market okay finally uh after 40 years i figured out a bit of your motorboats and they're they are an interesting challenge they are easier to do because there's less complexity on a motorboat then sailboat um but it was it was another challenge and i was ready for another challenge like the trimaran sounds like the one who did the uh i think that one was the cold cars gp yeah and you know when we did that boat this was an emerging sector of the yacht racing field and i i remember making a conscious decision not to pursue this because it was a financial decision i was getting the opportunity to do these hundred foot plus boats and there was way more money in that than the complexity of a racing multi-hole so i i that was one of my strategic decisions to not pursue that and also they were tipping over all over the place you know they're capsizing and breaking up so if you want to it was not really a sustainable business it could have been as it turned out but it was easier to create a sustainable business from the big personal private yachts but it was even on that one though when you took on that challenge you know the way that again the what you did with the rig it sounded like you were talking about the hall putting more buoyancy i mean you were still willing to push the boundaries of what was considered the norm of the design of trinomials right so you're you're always asking yourself how can it be done differently and that's that's the resounding theme too is you know again that'll audacious audacity right like don't let the others influence you what can't be done find a way try something different that was inspiring the colt cars was the first multi-hull that would go up wind like a normal boat and we would we did that boat at the same time when i was doing the maxi races killer and condor it was pretty amazing that a 60 65 foot multi-hole would go win faster than a kilo or in condor and because we were the first people to put a proper rig on a multi-l they were very low aspect ratio rigs the first guys that were racing across the ocean and we put a decent cinema it was like a racing boat keel a lot so that was they were both innovations and they won the round britain and arnold race with it but there was more interesting these hundred foot boats that was really fascinating and i think that's because i i've always been in love with sailing ships so i love the idea big boat is under sail yeah like those t clippers the one of the paintings you had commission i remember seeing one of your presentations that seems to have really fascinated you right those those you're talking about them you know their speed their size how much crew they had like it seems to be sort of your anchor you're putting that in the back and you're going okay here here's where we're from here's where we're going but you're always giving reverency um to the past one of the things that i had a lot of fun with was eventually up to sale on one of these the u.s coast guard oh yeah and so i've had the opportunity to sell three times on that boat and that was like a dream come true you know when i was a kid selling my seven foot dingy around that's where i wanted to be with captain cook and now you're in vancouver one of the places that they landed new zealand being another one eventually and then and then they made it well cook i don't think cook mate i don't think he made it here vancouver did it because well he went back he went further north yeah yeah so the what about that was the one thing it seemed to be that you were a lot of builders were building aluminum and with uh mirabelle you were you were really pushing the composites and you were talking about what was interesting is how you were able to obviously vary the hall thickness at different points and but a lot of the builders were doing metal was that a hard push for you to get the owners and the yards to agree to get to that scale on the fiberglass halls we were certainly limited by the number of builders willing and able to do composites which actually surprised me composites has so many benefits for a yacht building but the establishment shipyards do metal and and they don't don't want to you know they don't want the hassle of changing so that means you've got to paint your boat if you've got a metal boat you're going to paint it more often than a composite boat rust you know and then for a 200 foot yacht that's serious money oh yeah yeah especially making you look good the how was how hard was it of the concerns about the rings i mean you start your journey and you look at you know you started around i think it was an 82 there was an ro irc there was one of the racing boats and then you went to that 102 where the rig started getting people were really doubting that it was possible and then it went further like as you were pushing the boundary with the rigs did you feel that at one point you would meet a challenge that couldn't be met or did you always know that it was just fine just find the way to achieve it yeah where were you in doubt that it was even possible let's always say yes then figure it out i love it i love it i love it love it i mean i i've got a really cool story about this was to do the big mirabella project biggest single master yacht in the world and my client wanted to park it of his house in palm beach so the keel depth was an issue so it obviously had to have a lifting keel and for this boat the kill was going to be 150 tons so i'm going i said yes now i've got to figure it out so i'm talking to an techy friend of mine hoping for some help and i said i've got i've got this yacht i'm doing and it's got a keel when it's down it's 32 feet when it's up it's 15 feet and it's 150 tons he said i think you need to talk to a friend of one in aberdeen no oil industry north sea oil industry so i call this numbering heavy and a very broad accent scottish guy answers the phone and i can hardly understand him because he's scottish accent so i describe what i'm trying to achieve and he said tell me again how heavy it was 150 ton keel and he it goes quiet for a few seconds so i'm wondering am i really asking too much and he came back and said do you mean in the yeah i can't do this kind of here except you got to imagine do you mean 1500 tons or 150 and i went 150 and he went yeah we got hydraulic rams along around the yard here 150 times nothing 1500 would have been a problem but 150 coming pick one up tomorrow so it's a great example of thinking you have an insolvable problem but if you ask you'll figure it out yeah that's a big theme of your book i totally agree i think that's not to be lost on anyone doing anything alone by yourself will limit your potential greatness is not i mean you can whatever you achieve yeah sure but by working with others the collaboration is just it becomes a multiple like it just sort of then you're not like you were saying you're not bound by convention you know by the norms you're breaking boundaries you're trying new things that was also very yeah working with us is a big one i thought to the way that you gave a lot of reverence to your clients i mean they weren't just people that were coming through the door it sounds like you created a lot of relationships with them way beyond the business it almost they were inspiring you like you said on multiple levels like i thought one of the most powerful statements in the book that came out why so sad when mr tanaka saw you when you landed in japan and i thought wow and for you to share that and then to look interrespectively to yourself like why because the japanese i lived in japan too that brutal honesty you know saying that to a stranger forgetting not you know north america we live here in the british world you know that norm of there's an inside voice an outside voice and you know you don't ruffle the feathers necessary why so sad and i love how short it was and how it triggered even in you your own sort of journey uh you were mentioning through the meditation and everything else i was like wow so working with those people also made you a different person because of the experience what the doors they were opening tell me how how like all these maybe and there's a lot in the book that you give her in c2 but if there's anybody here that you want to share about how they help you become a better designer a better person um anyone that you want to give a shout out to as a story to just show people how it goes two ways it's a two-way street in life it sounds like yeah i think that like i could i immediately i go to the very early days you know when i'm in my 20s um by the time i was 30 i was kind of more in control of the process and had enough experience but when i was in my 20s i was looking at it what everyone else was doing and again i think it was the positive side about being homeless at school thank you and the more i think about it being hopeless at school freed me up to look beyond the normal and obvious stepping stones to whatever you're trying to achieve that different path yeah so i was not going to get to university so that wasn't a path that was possible so i'm going to do another path somehow that worked okay now i have four daughters and i've had discussions with them about well they say dad you can't do it today like you did it it's not possible to do it the way you do it's about paying for school fees so you know the big discussions about i want to go to university for another 20 years when you pay so first of all i reflected on this day you can't do it like you did i'm not sure now it's different for sure and everyone is doing the academic way but i think impossible then figure it out i i actually you know what to be honest there's a lot of you see a lot of people innovating in ways where they have no formal training like again elon musk i mean he's not a he's a mechanical or physics but you know again people said it could be that yeah and a partial example besides musk is um larry ellison gates i mean most of these guys didn't follow through completely the academic way they kind of gave up halfway through or whatever yeah facebook same thing yeah so i you have to be careful about predicting um through conventional ways because most of the tycoons in the computer world actually didn't do it the conventional way yeah it seems like you were be able to surround it with a lot of people who are willing to take risks i mean that's ultimately it sounds like your network and your clients were also when they take risk in their own career their own innovations and then you get to meet them at a point in their life where they're pushing their own boundaries trying different things maybe not a race array not maybe win a race but push the boundaries of what boat building can do what comfort can do like that challenge of the four uh people crew on that boat just i mean i mean nowadays we hear about what they can do but back then the level of automation to be able to do that and even the throwing of the sales like that's an impossible sales of that size that you're saying is it even gonna hold how is it gonna how are you gonna actually put it around the furler it's just i don't know every single one of those would be enough to put everyone in a room going on it can't be done and yet i don't know other people go okay well how are we gonna do it as opposed to predicting like you said don't predict the future find a way i love it absolutely love it i can't imagine being presented by an impossible uh you know yacht designs requirement no i think i would just go oh someone knows how to help me with this kind of find the right guy when you wrote the book and we're gonna i want to respect your time it sounds like you were writing the book hey share your story but to me it also sounds like you're trying to inspire others like the the whole thing about saying yes your own i thought when you were talking about you know you not being able to pass the aviation exam i thought sharing that was really good too a lot of people you know would have setbacks or they think they don't have it you know that they compared to others they don't have it it sounds like you're showing that there's many ways if you follow your heart follow your passion and you say yes to me the book was also inspirational it wasn't just your story it was your story as a way to see how the world you know don't be told that it can't be done you know drive i mean you worked hard clearly uh and you're saying a lot of sacrifices a lot of sacrifices for your passions but to me the book came across as also inspirational what was your motivation to write the book i think teaching i think it was a why did i do it [Music] apparently it's because it's doing something you haven't done i like that generally you know [Music] um but for this is my take on me so i'm a it's a pretty interesting case because it looked pretty bloody hopeless when i was 15. and it turned out perfect yeah so i'm i'm conscious that kids that at 15 that are feeling hopeless need to read my book yeah i think so that's a really good inspiration i look at even my own brother you know his path to success was not normal at all you know if you looked at him he didn't go the normal way and there's a lot of people in my circle same thing a lot of our clients you look at their path impossible paths not predicted you know and you look at what they were able to accomplish and you're right it is inspiring because otherwise if you predict too much the future like you said you might get down when you don't know what could have happened in your life you know there's no reason to believe that you have a destiny that isn't to whatever fulfillment you want to go right say yes that i thought yeah i think there's a lot of inspiration in that book yeah another thought that comes up just down jeff is so about the book so i i didn't want to do just a book so i i found a guy here in vancouver that did the design for me so i wanted to make the book special and it's an award-winning for its design so yeah i couldn't see no pictures no design you know what i mean most books are just words so i did it because i wanted to create something beautiful mission accomplished i think the images are grouped are you in the sketches you know a lot of the chapters start with a sketch a doodle yeah there's an artistic element to it for sure you can't i mean words can only convey so much the images you're right it's beauty right there's a lot of beauty a lot of inspiration um any other things before we get closing that you want to share and i can't believe you spent so much time with me today i can't tell you be thankful enough this is a dream of mine this is amazing i remember presenting you were presenting a real van about a camera a few years ago and i was in the back of the room and i was listening to you talk and i was like oh my god and here a few years later chatting with you about your book it's awesome awesome there's a lot more stories thank you last week i was doing something at ubc presenting to the naval architecture class we've told a lot of stories none of them are duplicated here so there's another whole bunch of stories there's plenty of stories but you you seem to be caring about and i heard also in your book you were doing the same thing uh in new zealand you went to also a naval architect school and you were helping so that seems something that you're doing you're trying to inspire others right the new the new generation that you know giving back finding giving them that spark it sounds like yeah i mean you you i think you get a certain age for me i just was in oriented in in that you know kind of retired now but we're still doing a coastal boat yeah so this job you probably retire when you die it's beautiful because it's a passion right it's not a work it's like some of my clients were farmers and he said you know never worked a day in my life and we know that people owned it operate a farm but to them it's not work it's uh but it's true jeff that the stroke made me think differently i mean before i had the stroke i would have said what an easy life you know just and then after this i'm going that was crazy what we were doing so it feels now like there's another period and it's to do with sharing teaching and trying to understand this inner work i do you know you mentioned meditation i just it's just what happens i don't have i think it happens to most people but it really helped me to wonder i'm more interested in what the hell happened yeah there's a lot of inspiration sharing those stories lots even even myself reading that there's tons sharing is huge because you know it makes things people believable unfortunately just because it's your birthday you're still too young to figure this stuff out good one thank you so much ron for being here today i appreciate it i really do and thanks for sharing your stories i think that's the you know getting closer to you know understanding your journey is awesome so thank you very much for being here today thanks everyone happy to be here thank you [Music] English (auto-generated) Videolytics