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My first design, the 26 ft. sloop White Rabbit, was created in 1966 during the three year period I attended my boat building apprenticeship in Auckland, New Zealand. I was 19 years old at the time. Six years later, after successfully competing on the international ocean racing circuit, I designed a 24 ft. racer, Eygthene, to the IOR Quarter Ton Rule. I was working in the engineering department of production yacht builder Morgan Yachts in St. Petersburg Florida at that time.
Eygthene won the 1973 Quarter Ton Championships in Weymouth, England, and enabled me to secure the design commission for Golden Apple from Irish yachtsman, the late Hugh Coveney. The success of this yacht against world competition created the foundation of my Irish based yacht design business.
These racing yachts formed the backbone of the Ron Holland Design organisation for several years, with a string of winners in level rating, world championships and Admiral’s Cup events. The highest level of international competition.
Based on the racing success of the Admiral’s Cup yachts, I received design commissions for maxi racers, the largest yachts competing internationally. In 1980 Kialoa and Condor established the Ron Holland design philosophy in this area of the business and this lead to commissions for larger performance oriented cruising yachts.
Whirlwind XII, my first design over 100 ft. (30 m) in length, was launched from Royal Huisman Shipyard in 1986. She paved the way for a wide variety of design commissions from clients who demanded beautiful, safe, comfortable cruising yachts capable of worldwide voyaging. The common denominator is these are all fast performance oriented cruising yachts, the benchmark of the Ron Holland Design philosophy still in force with today’s design commissions.
1999 saw important new projects that included my first interior design commission – the 109 ft. (33 m) ketch Avalon – as well as my first motor yacht design work – the 151 ft. (46 m) Affinity. These were new areas of creativity that I found stimulating and logical extensions of a lifetime’s work in the yacht design field.
2004 was a milestone for Ron Holland Design with the launching of Mirabella V, to date the largest single masted sailing yacht in the world.
Reviewing the presented Ron Holland design work will show the wide variety of design concepts that have been created specifically to ensure my clients achieved yachts that fulfil their personal requirements. My organisation prides itself with interpreting the client’s goals and integrating these requirements with aesthetically pleasing and performance oriented design solutions.
Ron Holland | 
