George Harding Cuthbertson

George H. Cuthbertson, aged 88, died on October 3, 2017 at his home in Toronto, Canada. George Cuthbertson was the last surviving member of the original founders of C&C, being predeceased by George Cassian, Ian Morch, George Hinterhoeller, and Erich Bruckmann.

George H. Cuthbertson was inducted into the Canadian Sailing Hall of Fame in 2014.

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 to honour significant contributions and achievements by a Canadian.

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

The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes has in its archives the early original C&C design and construction drawings, a retirement donation by Cuthbertson of his papers. In 2008 Tim Jackett, whose company bought the C&C name in 1996, donated the rest of the Cuthbertson papers and more, dating from 1972 through to the late 1980s.

When George Cuthbertson was asked back in 1992 to name the company's most outstanding boats from his tenure, he felt that the original C&C 35 was a standout. He also mentioned two other models from its era: The Redline 41 Condor earned C&C its second—and last—SORC title in 1972. At that same SORC, the C&C 61 Sorcery was first overall in two races. Socery had amassed a trophy case of victories in 1971 for owner James Baldwin of Locust Valley, N.Y., and Cuthbertson felt the fame of this design has been largely overlooked in Canada because none of the 61s ever sailed in "local" waters.

In 1982, Cuthbertson left the company he created to relaunch his design career with a new company, Motion Designs, producing drawings for Ontario Yachts and other local Ontario builders.

In 1974, George H. Cuthbertson was elected to membership in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

In 1971 hull #1 of the 43 ft (13.1 m) "Limited Edition" series, Arieto, won first in Class B of the SORC, and the Montego Bay Race. Also in 1971, Endurance, a 43-footer as well, won the Chicago-Mackinac Race. In 1972, Condor, the prototype Redline 41 won SORC overall and the 43 foot Arieto won the Nassau and Governor's cups.

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

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

In an article in Maclean's magazine in August 1970 George Cuthbertson was described as six-foot-four, weighing 220 pounds. He has a crewcut, his voice is deep, and he looks like a linebacker on his day off. He also had a couple of nicknames:

After the introduction of the IOR Rule in the early 1970s, the sailing world changed dramatically with the rise of a whole new cohort of young designers. This, combined with the increased demands of running what was becoming a large multi-national public company answerable to a Board of Directors, led Cuthbertson to hand the design responsibilities to Robert Ball in 1973. After a short break from the company, Cuthbertson returned to C&C in the position of President, a position he held until an outside acquisition of the company in late 1981.

Through the 1970s Cuthbertson flew Cessna 172s and floatplanes. In his retirement continued to fly, usually a custom built Cessna 172. He also tinkered with furniture design and travelled widely. It was his practice to visit marinas to check in on the condition of the sailboats he had designed.

In September 1969 the design firm of Cuthbertson & Cassian Ltd. joined with three of the builders producing Cuthbertson & Cassian designs, 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 custom yachts that came off Cuthbertson's board in this time period further consolidated Cuthbertson's and C&C's reputation on the race course under the CCA rule, and included the 53’ Inferno II for Jim McHugh, the 54’ Bonaventure V for Bernie Herman, True North for the 1969 Canada's Cup, and Mirage and Merrythought for the unsuccessful 1971 defence of Canada's Cup, both of which would go on to achieve great offshore racing success under Gerry Moog and Jack King.

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 balsacored 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.

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 numbered several hundred before production ceased.

By 1964, the company was but a short step away from becoming involved in designs of fibreglass construction. Cuthbertson had some experience with the material back in the early 1950s, building the Water Rat dinghy, but it was only beginning to have an impact on the boating industry in the early 1960s.

Many more trophies bear her name. In 1961 alone, Inishfree won the Marlatt and Boswell Trophies, the Cosgrave, Dufferin, Marquis of Lorne and Queen's Cups, her second Freeman Cup and the Rochester Race – her first of three in a row.

In 1961 Cuthbertson took George Cassian into the company, and established the design firm of Cuthbertson & Cassian, which designed a number of successful steel, and strip planked wooden boats for Great Lakes and East Coast customers.

Subsequently, owned by W. Bernard Herman of Island Yacht Club, Inishfree became in the early 1960s the first Canadian entrant in the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit, initiating Canadian participation which was to prove historic in years to come. She promptly began to rack up an enviable race record on Lake Ontario.

Among the more notable Cuthbertson & Cassian products from the early 1960s were Vanadis, a 34-footer built of steel in Germany for Payson Mayhew of Chicago in 1960, Galatia for Tony Ronza, Sr., Laura for Doug Hood, Courtesan for John Young of Shelter Island, NY, Inferno I for Jim McHugh, La Mouette and Thermopylae for Gordon Fisher, and the little motorsailor Pipe Dream for Sonny Slemin. When Payson Mayhew's Vanadis attended the 1961 Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC), Cuthbertson was part of her crew. His appearance may have heen the first modern day participation by a Canadian in the circuit, and the experience introduced him to many people who would be influential in the development of C&C.

Inishfree was George Cuthbertson's first design of consequence and she was built in Meaford, Ontario by Cliff Richardson Boat Works. A year and a half under construction, her materials and workmanship were the finest. Finished bright, she was double planked of mahogany over laminated oak frames, and bronze fastened with cast bronze centreboard in a monel trunk. Her laid deck was of teak, and her mainmast aluminum, but her other spars were of spruce. Inishfree was launched in August, 1958 and sailed from Georgian Bay to Toronto in time to score her first win – the Edward Prince of Wales Cup. In 1960, the RCYC burgee was first flown in a Bermuda Race as Inishfree sailed to a respectable finish in Class B. Returning home, she won the Freeman Cup Race, her first of three in a row – the only yacht ever to so accomplish – and she added a fourth Freeman Cup win in 1964.

Much had happened in the interim between the 1954 Canada's Cup and the launching of Inishfree. Cuthbertson and Davidson had parted ways, leaving Cuthbertson on his own to pursue further design commissions.

Cuthbertson & Cassian's first commission for a fibreglass design came from Hinterhoeller Limited, a rapidly growing firm in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Its founder, George Hinterhoeller, had apprenticed as a boat builder in his native Austria before emigrating to Canada in 1952. He had gone into business for himself in 1957, then incorporated as a private company in 1963. The 36-foot design Cuthbertson & Cassian supplied him became known as the Invader class, and about two dozen were built on a semi-production basis. The partnership then provided him with the design for the Redwing 30 and, later, the Redwing 35. These complimented the designs of Hinterhoeller himself, already in production—the HR 25, the HR 28 and the fantastically successful 24-footer, the Shark.

After graduating Cuthbertson worked for a time for the Canadian operation of SKF, the Swedish ball-bearing manufacturer. In 1951, he formed a registered partnership with Peter Davidson, a young man also active in sailing at the RCYC, for the purpose of producing products in an experimental new material called fibreglass. This work led to Cuthbertson's first production design, the Water Rat, a small dinghy conceived in 1953. About 80 in all were built, mostly with the bare hands of the two partners. There wasn't a lot of work for yacht design in Canada at that time, so they operated a yacht brokerage, which imported yachts from Europe, under the name of Canadian Northern Co.

George completed high school in Toronto before earning a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1950.

The elder Mr. Cuthbertson died suddenly of a heart attack in 1943. His widow and sons moved to her hometown of Toronto. There was no yachting background in his family. There had been exposure to boating at summer camps, but it was his enrolment in the Royal Canadian Yacht Club's junior program at 14 and his introduction to the instruction boats, known with dubious affection as "Brutal Beasts", that provided a formal introduction to the sport.

Cuthbertson was active in both 6-Metre and 8-Metre competition, which led to an important modification assignment. The RCYC and the Rochester Yacht Club had arranged to revive the Canada's Cup, an emblem of match racing supremacy on the Great Lakes, last contested between the two clubs in 1934, in honour of the RCYC's centennial in 1954. The series was to be sailed, as in the previous outing, in 8-Metres, and Royal Canadian Yacht Club member Norm Walsh hired Cuthbertson to secure a proven 8-Metre and draw up its alterations. After losing the opening race of the match series, Walsh's Venture II, with Cuthbertson and Davidson aboard, won three straight to bring the Canada's Cup to its native land for the first time since 1903. It was an encouraging debut for the 25 year-old Canadian designer, and it paid off with an imagined dividend when Walsh subsequently asked Cuthbertson to provide the design for a large ocean racer.

George Harding Cuthbertson RCA (1929-2017) was a 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 ‘80s.

George Harding Cuthbertson was born on June 3, 1929, in Brantford, Ontario. He was the second son of Elma Charlotte (née Ferguson), and Allan Edward Cuthbertson, who was general manager and later president of Harding Carpets, which operated a factory in Brantford. George's middle name came from carpet company founder Victor Harding.