George Cassian

George Cassian was awarded the Canadian Yachting Magazine, Ontario Sailing, 2011 Legends of Ontario Sailing Award as one of the “Builders of C&C Yachts”

George Cassian died of a heart attack on 10 April 1980, following a strenuous squash tournament at just 47 years of age. George Cuthbertson, then C&C president, said of Cassian:

The C&C designs that came off C&C's drawing board in the early 70s for production building at the Niagara-on-the-Lake plant of George Hinterhoeller included the C&C 25, 27, 30, 35, and 39. The Custom Shop under Erich Bruckmann built such Cuthbertson & Cassian designs as the Redline 41, C&C 43-1, C&C 50, and the successful C&C 61. The Redline 41 Condor would follow Red Jacket's lead and win SORC overall in 1971.

The high water mark of Cassian's design career was the 1971 SORC where Cuthbertson & Cassian-designed boats not only won overall, but also won three of the five divisions. This is a feat which has never been achieved by another designer.

Cassian had another nickname, Little George (Cuthbertson was Big George). That was because he was only six feet tall, and weighed only 170 pounds, compared to Cuthbertson's six-foot-four 220 pound frame. An article in Maclean's in 1970 described Cassian:

George Cassian was a yacht designer and founding partner of Cuthbertson & Cassian yacht designers, one of four companies that in 1969 formed C&C Yachts, a Canadian yacht builder that dominated North American sailing in the 1970s and early 1980s. His was the second “C” in C&C, with his design associate George Cuthbertson, being the first. Cassian would continue as a designer with that company until his untimely death in 1980 at the age of 47.

That victory was quickly followed by a successful defence of the Canada's Cup with Manitou in 1969. This racing success resulted in the formation of C&C Yachts in the same year with the amalgamation of the design firm and the three builders producing Cuthbertson & Cassian designs.

In September 1969 the design firm of Cuthbertson & Cassian Ltd. joined with Belleville Marine Yard, Hinterhoeller Ltd. and Bruckmann Manufacturing to form C&C Yachts. In that first year C&C achieves sales of $3.9 million.

The boat, named Red Jacket, was built by Bruckmann Manufacturing, in Oakville, Ontario, in fiberglass with a balsa core; the resulting structure was (and is) strong, stiff and significantly lighter than the wood or solid fiberglass yachts then sailing. Red Jacket is considered to be the first sailboat engineered with a cored hull (other earlier boats had balsa-cored decks, and powerboat builders were using it in transoms and superstructures). No doubt the weight savings and panel stiffness of her cored hull contributed significantly to her racing success. She was launched in May 1966 and took 11 of 13 starts that summer. That winter, Red Jacket headed south and won the famed SORC (Southern Ocean Racing Conference), which was a series of six races with the major two being from St. Petersburg to Fort Lauderdale and from Miami to Nassau.competing against over 85 of the best racers of the day. Red Jacket was the first Canadian boat to win the SORC. George Cassian was a regular member of the crew of Red Jacket. She is still actively raced by her owners, members the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.

Their first designs included a 34-foot steel boat, Vanadis, built by Kurt Beister in Germany and La Mouette, built of wood at Metro Marine in Bronte, Ontario. In 1965, Ian Morch of the Belleville Marine Yard commissioned C&C to design the 31-foot Corvette. The centerboard sloop was built of fiberglass and several hundred were completed before production ceased.

All of this sounded fine to Cuthbertson, so he sold him a 25% interest (later increased to 33%), which all went to pay off debts, and in 1961 they incorporated, the name chosen being Cuthbertson & Cassian Ltd. Neither George Cassian nor George Cuthbertson had ever worked in any yacht design office other than their own, so they had no preconceptions as to normal process and procedure.

On graduation Cassian decided the future looked bright in aircraft design, so he went to work in the design office of A.V. Roe. With the cancellation of the Avro Arrow contract, Cassian was one of the 17,000 Avro employees laid off on 20 February 1959.