Index

Robert E. Derecktor

This site is dedicated to the life of Bob Derecktor.

Sept 12, 1921 - Oct 10.2001

At Sea At Work

Stories Early Years

Family Last Years

Dear Father The Boats

Newest entry - Nov 28th, 2005

" The Encyclopedia of Yacht Design"

Throughout Bob Derecktor's life, he extolled the virtues of traditional craftsmanship and devoted much of his career to training and promoting craftsman in the yacht building industry.While primarily a boat builder, Derecktor also designed approximately 42 yachts, mostly sail boats. Among his better-known boats were the sloops Charisma(49 ft), Boomerang(64 ft), and Vamoose (40 ft), the ketch Gray Goose(36 ft),the yawls Figaroiv(51ft) and Salty Tiger (47 ft). These and others were successful in SORC, Bermuda, transatlantic and Admiral's Cup racing.

Born in Meriden, Conn, Derecktor designed and built, Jezebel, a 24 ft sloop at age 13,pouring the lead keel himself. He and a friend sailed it to Nova Scotia and back. When he was fourteen, he requested and got a meeting with Olin Stephens ii, then 26, at his house in Scarsedale, NY.Stephens recalled being impressed with sketches of Derecktor's boats and by his energy and self assurance. But the desite to own a boatyard and build boats seemed to be Derecktor's first preference. He entered Swathmore College in Pennsylvania to study mechanical engineering, but left after 2 years.

Derecktor built a 30 ft schooner when he was 18 which he sailed to the Chesapeake.While working at Owen's shipyard near baltimore as a ship's carpenter, he mastered calculus, a subject he had failed in college. Deciding that calculus was important to his life's work, he returned to college and took the final exam, scoring 100 percent.

In 1940 the Owens yard was building navy patrol boats and Derecktor became a foreman. Eighteen months later he was working at Julius Peterson's yard in Nyack, NY. With a recommendation from Olin Stephens, Derecktor moved to the Minneford yard on City Island, NY where he continued to hone his skills.When he was barely 21, he joined the navy and served in the Pacific for the next 26 months on PTboats, eventually working to repair them.

Returning home in 1946, Derecktor acquired waterfront property in Mamaroneck, NY and began building wooden boats. The buisness did well, but his own ideas were often in conflict with those of his project designers which lead him into designing his own.( When Derecktor died, Olin Stephens said " He built many S&S designs and because I felt a responsibility to the owner. This was sort of an adventure with my confidence in his quality ,somewhat offset by Bob's cavalier attitude toward the plans he was supposed to follow - Bob added both quality and color to the world of sailing"

By 1956 Derecktor was building boats according to his own designs as well as those of Sparkman and Stephens, John Alden, Phil Rhodes and others. The last boats he built of wood were the 12 meter Valiant and his own Mother Goose, a 45 ft yawl,in 1971. He built a few boats in fiberglass but he and his workmen disliked the material so he switched to aluminum construction in 1976

Derecktor was demanding, direct and uncompromising in what he believed was right.In the words of one of his repeat clients, Avard Fuller," Tact and diplomacy cannot be counted among his great virtues"

Derecktor had many other interests too. He designed and built award winning furniture and collaborated on a geodesic house for the Phillipines

Derecktor built six America's Cup defenders - Valiant, Mariner, Stars and Stripes and USA11.He died in 2001,critical and uncompromising in his work ethic to the end

- Thomas G Skahill

Please send any material that you would like posted to Barb@thedancingspirit.com.