The world's most successful yacht to compete at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week 2017

The world’s most successful ocean racing yacht over the past nine decades; the famous 16-metre long American yawl, Dorade, is to compete at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week 2017.

No yacht in the long history of the sport has won more of the world’s major races, nor covered more offshore racing miles, than Dorade. She has collected first place trophies for the Fastnet Race out of England, the Bermuda race, the Transpacific Race between Los Angeles and Hawaii plus many more.

All success, spanning more than eight decades, has come in the northern hemisphere, so Dorade’s owners, Matt Brooks and Pam Rorke Levy, have now decided it is time to give their yacht the chance to be a winner in southern hemisphere events.

Dorade was designed in 1929 by 21-year-old Olin Stephens and built at a cost of $28,000 under the supervision of his younger brother, Rod, at Minneford Yacht Yard in New York. When she emerged from the shed for her launching in 1930 observers were shocked by what they saw. The hull shape had her looking more like a day-sailing 6-metre class yacht rather than an ocean racer: she was certainly a far cry from the traditional American schooners of the day.