In 1965 Canadian yachtsman Perry Connolly commissioned Cuthbertson and Cassian to design a custom 40-foot racing sloop. He asked for “the meanest, hungriest 40-footer afloat.” The boat, named Red Jacket, was built by Bruckmann Manufacturing in fiberglass with a balsa core — a structure that was, and is, strong, stiff, and significantly lighter than the wood or solid fiberglass yachts then sailing.

Red Jacket is considered to be the first sailboat ever engineered with a cored hull. She was launched in May 1966 and took eleven of thirteen starts that summer. The following winter, Red Jacket headed south and won the famed SORC — the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit — competing against more than 85 of the best racers of the day. She was the first Canadian boat to win the SORC.

The qualities that have defined the Bruckmann name for 57 years are not marketing. They are the operating standard — carried forward intact, and deepened by the addition of Ellis’s eye for the timeless.