Tony Smith

At the age of 19, Tony Smith bought a set of plans for a 24ft Arthur Piver trimaran, finished building it in 1964 and sailed it solo from Britain to France. By 1969 Tony was 25 years old and had built two 25 ft (7.6 m) trimarans and raced 3,000 miles (4,800 km) round Britain in a 33 ft (10 m) trimaran. Working for or with the UK agents of Arthur Piver Tony had raced Startled Faun a 33 foot Piver Stiletto design.  He had developed a vast store of knowledge about trimarans and their behaviour in varying sea states. As Tony wrote "I was ready to make the next quantum leap in design." 

His third trimaran, the innovative folding-wing 26ft Telstar, began production in 1970. More than 270 were built over the next decade in his factory in Sandwich Marina, on England’s South Coast, where fellow pioneer Derek Kelsall was also based. In 1974 he designed a 35 foot version and 8 were built.

The 35 foot version also was an excellent boat tested in the Round Britain Race where is proved very tough and seaworthy but it was not a great sales success. Tony tested his designs in the Round Britain Races and by sailing them himself with considerable success. In 1980 having acquired the moulds of the Aristocat another popular 30 foot cruiser that rather resembled a modernised grp Bobcat, when its makers want into administration, Tony left recession hit Great Britain and moved his business to the USA.

 The Telstar moulds were destroyed in 1981 when the factory burnt down. But he developed the Aristocrat  into the Gemini series of designs which became not only America's first production catamaran but also the best selling catamaran in the World in the 80's and 90's. Tony also revitalised the Telstar in a new version in 2005  building another 82 craft of this  accomplished design. 

Tony and his son sailed across the Atlantic in their latest redesign of the Gemini catamaran to prove that this rather low bridge decked, and narrow beam craft was seaworthy. However the design was proved  to be an excellent coastal cruiser which was a great family boat many of which remain popular on the used boat market after Performance Cruising Inc ceased production in 2010. 

Hunter Marine took over the business and  produced 21 Gemini 105Mc ‘Design Touch’ catamarans over the 18 months after they took over production in 2010. Production seems to have ceased in 2015 when the US boat industry was facing a massive recession like that which drove Tony out of the UK 30 years before. 

The final version the Gemini Legacy 35 was a very impressive craft considering the original underpinnings of Tony's design lay in the Aristocat 30 albeit that the moulds had been redesigned many times in that 30 years of production and she was a very different design by then but was constrained by the narrow beam and low freeboard of the original boat. It has to be said that the design was also very different in its hull spacing, free board and bridgedeck clearance from the up to date designs coming from other mass producers of the  French, South African and Australian brands. 

However Tony's achievements as a UK multihull pioneer in the 60's and in creating such a successful catamaran mass production company as he did in America for over  50 years makes him a very unsung hero in the multihull world.