Leslie Geary

L.E."Ted" Geary (1885 - May 19, 1960) was a naval architect who grew up in Seattle, Washington. He designed and raced numerous competitive sailing vessels, and also designed commuter yachts, fishing boats, tug boats, and wooden hulled freighters.

Geary was born in 1885, in Atchison, Kansas, and moved to Seattle with his parents in 1892. He exhibited an early attraction to water-related activities. In 1899, at age 14, he, along with a friend, designed and built the 24-foot centerboard racing sloop Empress.

Four years later, with lifelong friends Dean and Lloyd Johnson, Geary designed and built Empress II, another 24-foot centerboard racing sloop. With Geary at the helm, she was never defeated in local races. While a sophomore at the University of Washington, he designed Spirit, a 42-foot LOA (Length Over All) racing sloop for the Seattle Yacht Club. Spirit would successfully challenge the Canadian Yacht Alexandra for the Dunsmir Cup in 1907. Geary’s success attracted the attention of several prominent Seattle businessmen who at Geary’s suggestion would finance his education as a naval architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Geary would design several more competitive sailing vessels and crewed on many others in his long career. Among his designs are Sir Tom, an “R” class boat that dominated the racing circuit along the West Coast for three decades; Katedna, later Red Jacket, a 62-foot LOA schooner which would enjoy unrivaled success in Northwest racing; and Pirate, another successful “R” class racer. In 1928 Geary would design the popular "Flattie," a one-design sail trainer that is now known as the Geary 18.

Geary started his professional career designing commercial vessels, including Chickamauga, the first diesel-powered tug in the United States, commercial and fishing vessels, and during World War I, large 330-foot wooden-hulled freighters.

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