Designer profile: David Thomas
Thomas was one of the most prolific designers in the 1970s and 80s and few people have designed such a wide variety of craft. In a long career, he continued to produce innovative craft at an age at which most of his contemporaries had long since given up.
His first commercial success was the Elizabethan 30 in 1969, a very capable design that scored well on the race course and subsequently went on to become a desirable fast cruiser.
Thomas’s name is almost synonymous with Hunters and Sigmas, starting with the 22ft Hunter Sonata in 1976, a design that drew immediate acclaim. Competitive one design fleets sprang up all over the UK and Ireland and the boat was swiftly followed by the 28ft Impala, 20ft lift keel Medina and 25ft Delta. We tend to think of broad stern designs with chines as being a recent development, but they featured on a number of Hunter’s models in the 1990s, including the Ranger 265 cruiser and the 707 sportsboat.
Despite his close association with these brands, they represent only a fraction of his output. One high-profile brief was for the first fleet of 67ft steel yachts built for Chay Blyth’s first BT Global Challenge – a yacht race for amateur crew going the wrong way round the world, which was first run in 1992/3.
Despite his many successes Thomas remained modest and unassuming. I sailed with him on a blustery winter’s day in the early 2000s, on an Elizabethan 30 he had restored to immaculate condition and refitted with the latest kit. Even though well past retirement age, he was still enthusiastically experimenting with new ideas, including a suit of then state-of-the-art laminate sails he was evaluating for Sobstad, and a new antifouling formulation.
He continued to design boats until shortly before his death in 2014, most notably for Cornish Crabbers, which is owned by his son Peter.