Greg Elliott is a New Zealand sailing yacht designer. He is most notable for the

Elliott 6m The Elliott 6m is an Olympic-class keelboat, designed by New Zealander, Greg Elliott. It was selected for the women's match race, match racing event for the 2012 Summer Olympics, 2012 Olympics. The Elliott 6m carries a spinnaker pole and Spinnake ...

, an Olympic-class

keelboat A keelboat is a riverine cargo-capable working boat, or a small- to mid-sized recreational sailing yacht. The boats in the first category have shallow structural keels, and are nearly flat-bottomed and often used leeboards if forced in open wat ...

selected for the women's

match racing A match race is a race between two competitors, going head-to-head. In sailboat racing it is differentiated from a fleet race, which almost always involves three or more competitors competing against each other, and team racing where teams consis ...

event for the

2012 Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

. He has designed yachts that have won all four Blue Water Classic races, the

Fastnet Race The Fastnet Race is a biennial offshore yacht race organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club of the United Kingdom with the assistance of the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes and the City of Cherbourg in France. The race is named after the Fastnet ...

, the

Transpacific Yacht Race The Transpacific Yacht Race (Transpac) is a biennial offshore yacht race held in odd-numbered years starting off the Pt. Fermin buoy in San Pedro, California and ending off Diamond Head in Hawaii, a distance of around . In even-numbered years the P ...

, the

Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race The Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race is an annual event hosted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, starting in Sydney, New South Wales, on Boxing Day and finishing in Hobart, Tasmania. The race distance is approximately . The race is run i ...

, and the Transatlantic Race. He has also designed several yachts that hold or held world records, including '' Mari-Cha IV''.

Early career

Greg started his career with a boat building apprenticeship in Auckland. He then started building boats to his own designs and due to their success in races around New Zealand, started receiving commissions for other designs.

Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron Youth Scheme

In 1987 the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron recognised they didn't have enough crew to compete in the

America's Cup The America's Cup, informally known as the Auld Mug, is a trophy awarded in the sport of sailing. It is the oldest international competition still operating in any sport. America's Cup match races are held between two sailing yachts: one f ...

. They commissioned a fleet of Elliott 5.9s for their Youth Keelboat Programme. Many of New Zealand's successful America's Cup sailors learned their craft on these boats and examples of their successor the Elliott 6m. The success of the Elliott 5.9m for youth sailing schemes led to its adoption around New Zealand.

Elliott 6m

The

is an Olympic-class

, designed by Elliott. It was selected for the women's

event at the

2012 Summer Olympics The 2012 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXX Olympiad and also known as London 2012) was an international multi-sport event held from 27 July to 12 August 2012 in London, England, United Kingdom. The first event, the ...

. The Elliott 6m carries a spinnaker pole and symmetric spinnaker, which is considered more suitable for match racing.

''Mari-Cha IV''

'' Mari-Cha IV'' is a sailing

superyacht A superyacht or megayacht is a large and luxurious pleasure vessel. There are no official or agreed upon definitions for such yachts, but these terms are regularly used to describe professionally crewed motor or sailing yachts, ranging from to ...

built as a two-masted

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

. The boat was ordered by Robert Miller with the particular goal of winning sailing records. The yacht has a waterline length of 40.2 m, a width of 9.6 m, and a displacement of 50 t. It was equipped with a

canting keel A canting keel is a form of sailing ballast, suspended from a rigid canting strut beneath the boat, which can be swung to windward of a boat under sail, in order to counteract the heeling force of the sail. The canting keel must be able to pivot to ...

with a 10 t keel bulb, which is able to exert a much larger

righting moment The metacentric height (GM) is a measurement of the initial static stability of a floating body. It is calculated as the distance between the centre of gravity of a ship and its metacentre. A larger metacentric height implies greater initial stab ...

then a conventional keel. On October 9, 2003, ''Mari-Cha IV'' improved the previous record for fastest west-east transatlantic passage by a sailing

monohull image:monohull.svg, right A monohull is a type of boat having only one hull (watercraft), hull, unlike multihulled boats which can have two or more individual hulls connected to one another. Fundamental concept Among the earliest hulls were simple ...

by more than two days, with a total time of 6 days, 17h, 15m and 39s. During the run, she also won the record for longest distance sailed in24 hours, covering 525.5

nautical mile A nautical mile is a unit of length used in air, marine, and space navigation, and for the definition of territorial waters. Historically, it was defined as the meridian arc length corresponding to one minute ( of a degree) of latitude. Today ...

s. This record was only broken 13 years later, in 2016, by ''

Comanche The Comanche or Nʉmʉnʉʉ ( com, Nʉmʉnʉʉ, "the people") are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in La ...

''. ''Mari-Cha IV'' gained particular distinction in 2005, when she broke the 100-year-old record for fastest monohull Atlantic crossing under regatta conditions (as opposed to solo runs, where the team can wait for optimal weather projections), previously established by ''

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

'' under

Charlie Barr Charles Barr (11 July 1864 – 24 January 1911), was an accomplished sailing skipper who three times captained winning America's Cup yachts. Early life Charlie Barr was born in Gourock, Scotland in 1864 and first apprenticed as a grocer before w ...

during the 1905

Kaiser's Cup Kaiser's Cup was a yachting race across the Atlantic between Sandy Hook, New Jersey (USA) and The Lizard (Cornwall, England). This was a famous sailing race of the day, and was won by the yacht ''Atlantic'' which held the record for nearly a centur ...

. During the 2005 Rolex Transatlantic Challenge she beat out another Greg Elliott design, ''

Maximus Maximus (Hellenised as Maximos) is the Latin term for "greatest" or "largest". In this connection it may refer to: * Circus Maximus (disambiguation) * Pontifex maximus, the highest priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome People Roman h ...

'', for

line honours Line honours is the term given to the first boat to cross the finish line of a yacht race. This is in comparison to the handicap honours or corrected time winner, which is theoretically equally accessible to all boats as slower boats have a lower h ...

and set the new record of 9 days, 15 hours, 55 minutes and 23 seconds.

''Maximus''

''Maximus'' is a 100 ft

maxi yacht A maxi yacht usually refers to a racing yacht of at least in length. Origin The term ''maxi'' originated with the International Offshore Rule (IOR) rating system, which in the 1970s and 1980s measured offshore racing yachts and applied a single ...

built by TP Cookson for Charles St. Clair Brown; The boat was designed by Greg Elliott and Clay Oliver and was launched in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...

in February 2005. For the 2005 summer sailing season in the UK, ''Maximus'' was sponsored by ICAP. She won line honours in the

with a time of 68 hours 2 minutes 7 seconds, though ''Iromiguy'' won on corrected time. Despite the very calm conditions, her tall rotating rigging allowed higher wind speeds some distance above the water's surface to be accessible, giving her an advantage over rivals. ICAP sponsored ''Maximus'' again for the 2006 season. ''Maximus'' was acquired by Sydney accountant Anthony Bell and renamed ''

Investec Investec is an Anglo-South African international banking and wealth management group. It provides a range of financial products and services to a client base in Europe, Southern Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Investec is dual-listed on the London ...

LOYAL''. After undergoing modifications by Elliott, she came second to ''

Wild Oats XI ''Wild Oats XI'' is a maxi yacht, most famous for being the former race record holder and a nine-times line honours winner of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Launched in 2005, she was owned by Bob Oatley (Oatley's estate since his death in ...

'' in the 2010 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and won line honours in the following year’s Sydney to Hobart, in a very close race.

Designs

* '' Mari-Cha IV'' * ''

'' * Elliott 1350 * Elliott 5.9m * Elliott 35SS * Elliott 1050

References

External links

Elliott 6m

ISAF Elliott 6m Microsite
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elliott, Greg New Zealand yacht designers Living people People from Auckland Boat and ship designers Year of birth missing (living people)