Gino Morrelli's 2010 Commencement Speech at The Landing School in Maine
Good Morning,
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of best boat design and boat building schools in the world today.
I was thinking about what to say and so I did what any good designer does, I Googled “How to give a commencement speech” … figured out what others did first… unfortunately most of the stock speeches and advice say stuff like “follow your dreams”, “do what you like”, “be committed to your passion”, blah, blah, blah.
Well, the fact that you guys are here means you are already dreamers and obviously need to be committed if you want to get into the marine business in the worst recession in the last 80 odd years.
It seems to me you folks have already decided that the boat business is for you. In choosing The Landing School, you knew what you were getting into. Not like going to a university and coming out after 4 years with a diploma in drinking and Liberal Arts…. What are you going to do with that? You guys must have had a clue this education leads to possible work in the greatest of all fields, major toy building.
I feel blessed for having the good fortune and luck to turn my passion into a career. I don’t think a lot of people who knew me as an18 year old college drop out would have guessed I’d been part of teams that won two America’s Cup’s in multihulls, broke the round the world record, the Trans Atlantic records both ways, and the 24 hour record twice. They’d be really surprised I’d been asked to speak at a commencement at a great design and boatbuilding school 35 years later…
I can tell you only a few things that might help you. First thing, if you want to get good, at this business… do it all…. If you can’t build it, you can’t design it… If you can’t sail it, you can’t design it. Break it, understand its limit and then fix it…
You don’t have to be a builder to be a designer, but you have to be a good builder to be a great designer. Nat Herrschoff - great builder, great designer; Bruce Farr: good builder, great designer; Nigel Irens - good builder, great designer; Gilles Ollier - good builder, great designer.
Like the guys I mentioned before, I started in the garage of my parents house making a mess. I grew up as far away from the ocean as you can get - El Paso Texas and that other garden spot in Texas, Lubbock…. But my Dad raced cars for fun, and I grew up in the pits of various drag strips watching him build and tear down his own cars, trying to figure out how to go faster with a low budget. I was building my own crappy go-karts and mini-bikes by 7 or 8 years old.
Have you guys ever read a book by a guy named Malcolm Blackwell? Outliers l. His theory is to get good at anything, you have to put in 10,000 hours doing it … Bill Gates did it as a teenager, programming before anyone paid him, the Beatles did by playing in Hamburg for 8 hours a day for years, (insert an athlete Michael Jordan shot 10,000 hoops as a kid? another example) Well, I did it starting as a kid and by the time I was 20, I had done my 10,000 hours building stuff!
My folks moved to So Cal when I was 13… Dad gave up car racing and decided sailing seemed like a good thing to do with a wife and 5 kids… He bought a 24ft monohull and my brother, Tony and I got into it really fast. The ocean was just too cool. Surfing was too fun… and girls wore a lot less clothes than in Texas…I never missed Texas….
We attacked sailing and racing just like a new go-kart. We tore it apart and rebuilt it. When I was in high school we decided we needed a bigger boat. We started looking around to buy one, but kept seeing these things called Hobie Cats and some early home built trimarans sailing way fast! We decided to check them out. We cruised boatyards in So Cal, when they still had them, met a few other like minded crazy’s building boats and my Dad figured if he could build a race car that went 180, he could manage to build a boat that went 10…. So we bought a set of plans from an Australian designer, Lock Crowther for a 33ft trimaran. We did not know any better, so we built it just like he drew it… Funny thing it worked! We sailed fast and we got into racing it all over So Cal. I was kicked out of my high school sailing club for stealing and sailing club boats without permission too many times and maybe because my brother and I got busted surfing Lasers in a big south swell off Newport beach. Hmmm…Outlier or Outlaw… my parents were worried!
Out of high school, I went to work for Hobie Cat…as a forklift driver in the parts department! I tried to talk my way into the R&D department but fortunately for me, they did not need an 18-year--old knucklehead getting in the way! This was the heyday of Hobie Cat, the Mecca of cats at the time. I was bummed, I quit and went out and started to build my own 18ft cat in my parents garage. This was the same time John Burgess and Helen Tupper started the Landing School, 1978. A catamaran class called 18 square meter was just starting and it was a box rule. It appealed to me, not many rules, singlehanded, 180 sq ft of sail area, 18ft long, no beam restriction and no minimum weight and that’s it. Like an A-class cat on steroids. I built a wood boat that I quickly destroyed. Too much horsepower, bad chassis. I’m sure if my parents stayed in Texas, I’d be on a NASCAR or Indy team.
I talked a friend of mine, Craig Ashby, into going in with me to build a plug and a mold so we could build fiberglass boats that might stay together. We built the tooling in the back of his Dad’s shop and our two boats. By the time we got ours built, another friend asked me to build him a set of hulls, then another friend asked, then another. I was having too much fun and decided to drop out of college, rent a shop and make a go of it. Climax Catamarans… yea I know…too many girls, not wearing many clothes! I rented one of those industrial buildings 20 x 60 with small offices in front that I slept in on more than two dozen occasions. I went on a boat-building spree. I built 18 boats for 12 different customers in 2 years. In those two years, the boats I built went from weighing 350 lbs and costing $3500, to 135 lbs and $10,000. It was my college education and 10,000 hours. I made mistakes as fast as possible and I did not make a dime. Some of my customers bought every other boat because I was taking 20 lbs out every new boat every other month. I went from building hulls with polyester resin, monolithic fiberglass laminates and cardboard half round stringers covered with mat, too wet vac/Kevlar/nomex honeycomb/epoxy resin parts…
This turned my passion into a career. I went from building 18 m2 to a succession of race boats, commercial boats, production cats, and custom cruising cats:
45 foot cat White Knuckler/Wind Warrior designed and built California, won Transpac 1987
60 foot Region de Picardie, designed and built in France, won Mille Mille DeVille, 1985
40 foot cat Formula 40, US144/Smyth Team designed and co-built in California, won 1986 F-40 Championship
40 foot cat Formula 40, Region Nord-Pas de Calais, designed in California
40 foot cat Formula 40, Richmond, designed and co-built in California
60 foot cat Stars and Stripes, H1, A-Cup winner 1988, co-designed and co-built in California
60 foot cat Stars and Stripes, S1, A-Cup winner Sister ship, co-designed and co-built in California
40 foot cat 5 Prosail Formula Forties, designed
41 foot trimaran Happycalopse, BolDor winner, designed and co-built in California
I joined up with Pete Melvin in 1991. He brought Aerospace engineering to our efforts. He is responsible for most of our success. I always wanted to work for the best and hire guys who are smarter than me. We are now ten in the shop and I’m about the only guy without a degree!
Together we designed:
25 foot C-class Cat, Little Americas Cup challenger, M&M designed
41 foot trimaran Alinghi, BolDor winner, M&M designed
125 foot PlayStation, designed by M&M
113 foot Oracle/BMW contributing designer/consultant
200+ Leopard cats 38-47ft
200+ NACRA cats 18-20ft
10,000 Hobie Waves, 13ft cats
70+ commercial power cats 25-100ft
30+ private custom cruising cats, Gunboats, Westerly, 48-90ft
And
1 monohull…. Jungle boat for Disneyland….
I fell in love with ocean racing. I’ve done 4 TransPacs, 5 TransAtlantics and one record, Round Britian Ireland record, TransMed record, Isle of Wight record, Round Europe Race, Bermuda record, Jamaica record, 2 x broke the 24 hour record on PlayStation, at 687 miles in 24 hours. I started the Round the world Race on PlayStation till we had to pull out due to sail failures, Ensenada Record. I’ve had the great fortune to sail with Steve Fossett, Dennis Conner, Ernesto Bertarelli, Ken Read, Randy Smyth, Tom Blackaller, Cam Lewis, and even Ted Turner. All fun, terrifying at times, but unbelievable learning experiences.
Being a boat designer or boat builder is a like being an actor. You’re only as good as your last performance. I always try to treat each new project as if my career depends on it, because it probably does! You never know when your competition is going to out -think, out build, out work you. To be good at this, you got to be a bit mad. Madly passionate about boats and boat building. When I started my shop, a friend of mine said I was really good… at building boats nobody wanted. In those days, cats and multihulls were Outliers like I was and the world has come to me. Heck, if all goes well, we may even see multihulls in the next America’s Cup!
What would I do if I were sitting in your seats today? Well, you need two tools. A cell phone and a passport. Depending on what corner of this business your passion is, you are most likely going to travel. I have 2 million frequent flier miles, I’ve gone through many passports, I spent 4 years in France, 1 year in England, 2 years in Switzerland, 9 months in New Zealand, 4 months in Australia, 12 months in Cape Town in 2007, 9 months in China in 2008, 4 months in China in 2009, and this year, I’ve spent 3 months in China. Heck I’m leaving tonight, going to China and the Philippines. We are talking about opening an office in China. Learn Mandarin….. You’ll find work …. They’re building marinas…. Fast…
Your cell phone is for everything else, Google, keep in touch, be accessible. Find like-minded crazy’s. IBEX, boat shows, races, cruisers, harbors and bars…connect your dots, network with friends, friends of friends. We all have to be digital and mobile. Our future job security as toy builders and designers is threatened. It’s hard to do what we like in the US anymore. Labor and overhead is too expensive. Currently, we are working with 8 different Asian or Chinese -based companies, 1 Australian managed, 1 Dutch managed, 1 Taiwan managed, 1 South African managed, 1 English managed, 1 Philippine managed, 2 Chinese managed. They need guy like us, who know how to design and build toys. In a few years, as the Chinese, South Koreans, Philippines develop their recreational boating markets and 18 year old college dropouts start doing what I did then, you and I might not get jobs there so easily. They are still learning how to have fun on the water, they do their boating differently it’s fun, just different.
Design and Build what you dream about. Don’t worry about the money or success. If you like 5-knot monohulls, build the best 5-knot monohull. If you like restoring rot monsters, be the best rot monster restorer. Don’t worry about what’s hot or cool today. Just be mad about what you’re doing.
Thanks and good luck and “Friend” me on Face Book if you’re looking for a job in China!
