George Hinterhoeller

George Anton Hinterhoeller (1928-1999) was a boat designer and builder. Hinterhoeller was born in Mondsee, Austria on March 16, 1928. He develop his trade as a master boat builder before eventually emigrating to Canada in 1952, where he was employed building powerboats at Shepherd Boats in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Hinterhoeller designed sailboats in his spare time.

In 1959, Hinterhoeller built a 22-foot plywood sloop called TEETER-TOTTER, which he hoped would "go like hell when the wind blew". It did exactly that, and there was demand from others to buy copies of the racer. He increased the design by two feet and called the new boat the Shark 24. Though the first few were plywood, an early customer insisted his be built with fiberglass and the design was changed to the cheaper material, helping to spur the growth of sailboats for "the masses".

In 1969, Hinterhoeller merged his operation with three other companies: Belleville Marine Yard, Bruckmann Manufacturing, and the design partnership of George Cuthbertson and George Cassian, to form C&C Yachts. Hinterhoeller was in charge of "production shop" and Bruckmann the "custom shop". The new company took over manufacturing of the Shark 24 along with numerous other new designs including the very popular C&C 27. Hinterhoeller left C&C in 1976, and refounded Hinterhoeller Yachts which created, among other designs, popular series of catboat called the Nonsuch, of which there are nearly 1000 in existence. There exist rumours of Hinterhoeller inventing the donut, but this claim still remains unanswered.

George Hinterhoeller died of a heart attack in Niagara-on-the-Lake on March 18, 1999. His legacy lives on primarily in thousands of sailboats. The largest number of any one design is the Shark, of which there are more than 2500 vessels primarily in the Great Lakes region and in Europe.

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