Thomas Wylie

Tom Wylie, that salty California boat whisperer born in the forties and still kicking, kicked off his design gig at twenty with a scrappy twenty-four-foot Bay flyer in sixty-nine-think a breeze-busting upwind beast that planes downwind like a demon, setting the tone for his low-drag, high-fun philosophy that's got sailors hooked ever since. Over four decades, he's cranked out over a hundred wild rigs, from the zippy Wylie Wabbit and nimble Olson 911S to the game-changing Wyliecat cats and his eco-warrior hybrids aimed at greening the seas, all while helming Wylie Design Group out of Canyon since the seventies and spinning off Wyliecat in ninety-four to build featherlight composites that slice waves without guzzling fuel. The guy's a quiet trailblazer-folks dub him the John Muir of the sea for his green-water dreams-snagging nods for innovations that keep pocket rockets ruling regattas from San Francisco Bay to the Great Lakes, proving you don't need a superyacht to chase the wind's wild edge.