PHRF rating: 69

Yacht Club: Shilshole Bay Y.C.

Homeport: Seattle

Occupation: Boatbuilder

Age: young at heart

If the name rings a bell, it's probably because of the famous book he authored 30-odd years ago, Trekka Round the World, which tells of his then-remarkable four-year circumnavigation (1955 to '59) aboard the 21-ft, fin-keeled yawl which he built himself to a Laurent Giles design. Those who've read it will recall the grittiest part, when he temporarily laid up Trekka in New Zealand and joined Miles and Beryl Smeeton aboard Tzu Hang for a Cape Horn rounding. They got caught in a monstrous storm, pitchpoled and were dismasted in the Southern Ocean, finally arriving in Chile after 87 days at sea.

Trekka's lightweight wooden design was contrary to the heavy displacement cruising boats of its day, and you might say Guzzwell has taken a 'contrarian' outlook on boatbuilding ever since. His latest creation, launched at Seattle last year, is Endangered Species, whose 30-ft laminated wood hull closely resembles a scaled down BOC boat of the Open 60 class. She employs water ballast, and carries her ample beam all the way to her transom. Her hull is constructed from four layers of 1/8" spruce, stapled and laid up in alternating diagonals and an outer layer of teak run fore and aft. The resulting structure is so strong that no ribs are needed. She's counterbalanced by a simple, foil-shaped keel, has beautiful teak decks and carries a laminated spruce mast, stiffened by four 1/2" x 1/8" carbon-fibre splines.

Before emigrating to Canada as a young man, John's childhood in England included a voyage to South Africa on the family's 52-ft ketch. We're told his father taught him the principles of celestial navigation and woodworking while the family was held in a German prison camp during WWII.

During his long career as a professional boatbuilder, he has built a variety of sailing craft, including the 133-ft Zeus, the 65-ft Farr-designed Lively, the 158-ft topsail schooner Tole Mour, and his own 46-ft pilothouse cutter, Treasure, also built to a Giles design. He and his family cruised the Pacific several times on this boat and in '94 he entered her in the Pan Pacific Yacht Race from L.A. to Osaka, then returned via the Aleutians and mainland Alaska.

Think this guy has a yarn or two to spin? Oh, yeah.