Bill Lee (yacht designer)

Bill Lee
Bill Lee speaking at the Santa Cruz Yacht Club in February 2014
Born	1942 Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Residence	Santa Cruz, California
Nationality	American
Education	B.S. in Mechanical Engineering
Alma mater	California Polytechnic State University
Occupation	Boat Builder & Yacht Racer
Known for	Designing & Building Merlin, Chutzpah, & Santa Cruz 27s
Home town	Newport Beach, California

Bill Lee is the designer of many famous ocean racing yachts, and one of the founders of the Santa Cruz school of boatbuilding, known to many as the Wizard. Several of his designs achieved notoriety in the 1970s, with Chutzpah and Merlin having won the Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu many times.Merlin set and held the course record between 1977 and 1997, making the 1977 crossing in only 8 days, 11 hours and 1 minute.

Originally from Idaho, Bill's family moved to Pasadena, California when bill was eight years old. When Bill was fifteen years old, his family moved again to Orange County's Newport Beach where he first began to sail in El Toro dinghies at age 15. Newport Beach provided many opportunities for Bill to interact with yachts, from the Sea Scouts to competitive ocean yachts. Bill Lee graduated from Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo in 1965 with a degree in mechanical engineering. His first job as an engineer was in Southern California in the defense industry evaluating armored personnel carriers, as well as other similar military tools. His evaluations included stress and weight analysis.

At age 26, Lee first visited Santa Cruz with friends and began sailing in the Monterey Bay. In this year, because of the presence of the 5O5 World Championship in Santa Cruz, Lee imagined building a 30-foot 5O5 and set himself to the task. It was completed in 1970 and was named Magic. Magic displaced 2,500 pounds and carried close to 450 square feet of sail. Magic won the Monterey Bay series the following spring. The following year, Lee crewed for Art Biehi in Lee's first Transpacific Yacht Race where he was exposed to the conditions of the race and the expectations for victory. Lee is quoted reflecting to Biehi on how to win, "I told him that to win the Transpac (under the old conditions) you needed the smallest possible boat, the lowest possible rating, and the lightest possible boat, for little boats can surf when the bigger boats can't." With this insight, Biehi hired Lee to build his next boat.

Bill Lee built Witchcraft for Biehi, which launched in April, 1972. Witchcraft displaced 7,500 pounds and carried close to 600 square feet of sail area. Witchcraft won the Mazatlan Race in 1972 and is credited with encouraging an evaluation of Transpac handicap ratings in 1973 which resulted in penalties for low displacement boats. Even so, Witchcraft's sister ship, Chutzpah, had won the 1973 Transpacific Yacht Race.