fastonwater

The following piece was supplied by Bob Collins (05.07.10)

I joined circuit racing in 1968, working for Tony Williams, in his workshops in Northwood, Middlesex as a mechanic working with him on his Bristol/Carniti rigs. From there I went to Clive Curtis and James Beard in 1970, when they had Swordfish Marine in Twickenham, working on their Levi Hummingbird and the introduction of Catamarans with their Shultze, Molinari and Torrigia catamarans. Chris Hodges was one of the carpenters who worked at the next door marine business and as I was leaving Clive and James, Chris joined them and Cougar Marine was born.

I left the industry to pursue a career elsewhere, but started designing boats in 1976. My first design, an F3 (and, subsequently, all my designs) were built by Bob Nelson of Barracuda boats in Birmingham, who were the most prolific and successful UK F4 builder in the ‘70s. That F3 was raced by Tony Williams and won the UK F3 Championships in 1976. In the 80’s I designed all the Laing Homes sponsored F1 rigs for Steve Kerton, including the first all carbon fibre craft that Steve ran very successfully in 1984. In the 90’s I worked with Mercury Marine to bring SST120 to the UK and Europe and this is now current (2010) F2. I designed several F2 boats, one of which was raced by Jon Swarbrick.