Harvey Jones had a specific goal when he built the 55-foot Outlier, a cold-molded wooden yacht designed by Marcelino Botin and built by Brooklin Boat Yard in Brooklin, Maine. He wanted all of the intangibles that come with a boat built primarily with natural raw materials—and he also wanted something more.

“I built the boat to drive innovation in wooden boats,” said Jones. “There are companies that spend their time maintaining wooden boats, which is great, but if you don’t have innovation in wooden boat building, you’ll lose the art over time.”

With a win in the PHRF 1 division of the 168th edition of the New York Yacht Club’s 168th Annual Regatta, Jones and his Outlier team showed that the wood is still good for raceboat hulls, even when matched against the carbon fiber and fiberglass found in many modern raceboats.

“We are very proud of our performance,” said Jones. “This was the first real regatta we’ve done this year, so there was some learning going on. We came in today thinking, ‘It’s a great regatta and we’re going to do okay.’ But we had no idea we were going to win the regatta. We were lucky enough to pull out two bullets today.”

Outlier is equipped with a GORI 3 Blade Saildrive Single Pitch 19.5″ Propeller.

Photo credit: NYYC: Daniel Forster

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