About Us
Tony Castro
Fluent in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish, Tony Castro is a
world-class designer who has a lifetime of experience. Like many of his
peers Tony's career started with racing yachts and his designs have won no
less than 5 world championships.
More recently Castro superyachts have won 4 industry awards for design
excellence and his client list looks like a who’s who of international yacht
builders including Jongert, Oceanco, Jeanneau and Royal Huisman. His
reputation for designing yachts with outstanding performance was further
enhanced by “Scorpioni”, a 29m Castro designed sloop, winning the 2010
Superyacht Cup.
Castro has enjoyed enormous success with sail and powerboats since some
7,500 yachts to his design are afloat today, including the popular Laser SB3
at one end of the scale and the 65m, 280 ton square rigged ship “Tenacious”
at the other.
In addition to his proven expertise as a naval architect Castro has an eye
for style and understands modern composite materials and the need for value
engineering.
Today many designers use computer aided design, CAD, but Castro is one of
very few yacht designers to use Dassault Systemes CATIA CAD system - one of
the very best systems which, in the hands of a skilled designer, allows the
visualisation and optimisation of many aspects of the designer’s art.
Skip Novak
Skip Novak was born in 1952. He is best known for his participation in four
Whitbread Round the World Yacht Races since 1977. In that year at the age of
25 he navigated the British Cutter Kings Legend to 2nd place.
Skippering the Independent Endeavour in 1979, he won the Parmelia Race from
Plymouth to Freemantle Australia.
He skippered Simon Le Bon's Drum in the 1985/86 Whitbread Race coming 3rd.
He wrote a book entitled "One Watch at a Time" about this experience and it
was published simultaneously in England (David and Charles) and in America
(W. W. Norton).
In 1989 he was project manager and skipper of the Fazisi, the first Soviet
entry in the Whitbread Race, and he chronicled this watershed event in his
book "Fazisi - The Joint Venture" which was shortlisted for the William Hill
Sports Book of the Year Award in Britain.
Wishing to combine his mountaineering skills (New Zealand and the Alps,
expeditions to East Africa, Sikkim, Nepal, Patagonia, South Georgia and
Antarctica) with sailing he built the expedition yacht Pelagic in
Southampton in 1987 and has since spent every season since in Antarctic
waters, many of which were leading combined climbing and filming projects
based from his two vessels.
He is frequently asked to comment on high latitude adventuring and ocean
sailing by radio, TV and print media and is a regular contributor to many
sailing magazines worldwide, including several stints as a columnist for the
Daily Telegraph in London.
Briefly returning to grand prix ocean racing on large multi-hulls, in 1997
he navigated the French catamaran Explorer to a sailing record in the
Transpac Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu. In 1998 he co-skippered Explorer
with Bruno Peyron breaking the sailing record from Yokohama to San
Francisco. In January to March 2001 he co-skippered the 33 meter French
catamaran Innovation Explorer to a second place in the millennium non-stop,
no limits circumnavigation The Race.
In 2002/2003 Skip project managed the construction of his new Pelagic
Australis, a 23 meter purpose built expedition vessel for high latitude
sailing in order to augment the charter operations of the original Pelagic.
Launched in September of 2003 she is the flag ship for Pelagic Expeditions.