George Anton Hinterhoeller (1928–1999) was a Canadian boat designer and builder, a significant contributor to the Canadian sailboat industry for almost forty years.

Early life

Hinterhoeller was born in Mondsee,

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

on March 16, 1928. He first sailed at the age of 8.

Career

Hinterhoeller apprenticed and developed his trade as a master boat builder before eventually emigrating to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

in 1952, where he was employed building powerboats at Shepherd Boats in

Niagara-on-the-Lake Niagara-on-the-Lake is a town in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the Niagara Peninsula at the point where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario, across the river from New York, United States. Niagara-on-the-Lake is in the Niagara Region of On ...

, Ontario. He designed and built sailboats in his spare time. By 1956 he was taking numerous orders for the Y-Flyer one-design. He built 40 before “the market dried up.” In 1959, Hinterhoeller built a 22-foot plywood

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

called TEETER-TOTTER, which he hoped would "go like hell when the wind blew". It did exactly that, and there was demand from others to buy copies of the racer. He increased the design by two feet and called the new boat the

Shark 24 The Shark 24 is a Canada, Canadian-designed 24 Foot (length), ft sailing yacht which has earned itself a reputation of extraordinary reliability and longevity among sailors both in North America and Central Europe. Having been designed by George ...

. Though the first few were plywood, an early customer insisted his be built with

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

and the design was changed to the cheaper material, helping to spur the growth of sailboats for "the masses". In 1969, Hinterhoeller merged his operation with three other companies: Belleville Marine Yard, Bruckmann Manufacturing, and the design partnership of George Cuthbertson and

George Cassian George Cassian was a yacht designer and 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 1980s ...

, to form

C&C Yachts C&C Yachts was a builder of high-performance fiberglass monohull sailboats with production facilities in Canada, Germany, and the United States. C&C designed and constructed a full range of production line cruiser-racer boats, as well as custom ...

. Hinterhoeller was in charge of "production shop" and Bruckmann the "custom shop". The new company took over manufacturing of the Shark 24 along with numerous other new designs including the very popular

C&C 27 The C&C 27 is a family of Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections ...

. Hinterhoeller left C&C in 1976, and refounded

Hinterhoeller Yachts Hinterhoeller Yachts was a Canadian boat builder based in St. Catharines, Ontario. The company specialized in the design and manufacture of fiberglass sailboats. The company was originally founded by George Hinterhoeller as Hinterhoeller Limi ...

which created, among other designs, popular series of

catboat A catboat (alternate spelling: cat boat) is a sailboat with a single sail on a single mast set well forward in the bow of a very beamy and (usually) shallow draft hull. Typically they are gaff rigged, though Bermuda rig is also used. Most are f ...

called the Nonsuch, of which there are nearly 1000 in existence.

Death

George Hinterhoeller died of a heart attack in

on March 18, 1999, at age 71. His legacy lives on primarily in thousands of sailboats. The largest number of any one design is the Shark, of which there are more than 2500 vessels primarily in the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

region and in Europe.

Awards

George Hinterhoeller was awarded an honorary

Doctor of Laws A Doctor of Law is a degree in law. The application of the term varies from country to country and includes degrees such as the Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D. or S.J.D), Juris Doctor (J.D.), Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), and Legum Doctor (LL. ...

Brock University Brock University is a public research university in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. It is the only university in Canada in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, at the centre of Canada's Niagara Peninsula on the Niagara Escarpment. The university bear ...

or his contributions to "sailing, yacht construction and job creation" at the Spring Convocation on 4 June 1982. George Hinterhoeller was awarded the ''

Canadian Yachting ''Canadian Yachting'' is a bi-monthly (six issues a year) magazine, and boating news website which documents the Canadian yachting scene - from dinghies to keelboats, cruising to racing, youth sailing and around the world events.kerwil.com: "Ab ...

Magazine'', ''Ontario Sailing'', ''2011 Legends of Ontario Sailing Award'' as one of the “Builders of C&C Yachts”

Hinterhoeller archive

The

Marine Museum of the Great Lakes The Marine Museum of the Great Lakes is a museum dedicated to marine history in the Great Lakes. It is located at 55 Ontario St. in Kingston, Ontario, which is also a designated National Historic Sites of Canada, National Historic Site of Canada ...

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toro ...

has in its archives the personal drawings and files of noted Canadian boat builder and designer George Hinterhoeller, the donation thanks to his son Richard Hinterhoeller and Hinterhoeller's widow Nona Hinterhoeller.

Boat designs

References

Bibliography

* Doug Hunter – "The Pursuit of Excellence", A Corporate History of C&C Yachts Limited, Niagara-on-the-Lake: (April 1983) C&C Yachts * Daniel Spurr – "Heart of Glass: Fiberglass Boats and the Men Who Built Them" (St. John's, Newfoundland: International Marine/ McGraw-Hill 1999) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hinterhoeller, George Anton 1928 births 1999 deaths Canadian boat builders Canadian yacht designers People from Niagara-on-the-Lake Hinterhoeller Yachts C&C Yachts