Gary Mull

Gary Mull (September 27, 1937 – July 14, 1993) (cause of death cancer) was an American yacht designer who created a large number of popular fiberglass sailboats.

Gary Mull began his college career with a year at Pomona College as an English major, then moved to Oakland City College after taking time off for a sailboat race to Tahiti. He finished his degree as a Mechanical Engineer with a Naval Architecture minor at UC Berkeley.

Santana 22 (1965) and 27 (1966), also the 37. Mull's first sailboat design, the 22, was a breakthrough design that cemented Santana sailboats and their parent, W.D. Schock, as an icon of the West Coast marine industry. The first generation of Ranger designs noted below bear a strong resemblance to these boats.

The Ranger 22 (1977), 23 (1971), 26 (1969), 29 (1970), 32 (1973), 33 (1970), and 37 (1972). Most of these were cruiser-racers built to no particular handicap rule, but they rate favorably under PHRF and Portsmouth handicap and have been quite successful in local club racing. Mull himself described most of his designs as 'just nice little boats'. The Ranger 26 won the North American IOR 1/2 Ton Cup in 1970 and is still competitive today in PHRF. The Ranger 23 came in second in the North American IOR 1/4 Ton Cup in 1972 even though she wasn't designed to the IOR Rule. The Ranger 23 also won the Whitney Series in 1972, and is still very competitive in PHRF handicap racing. The Ranger 29 and 33 have always been competitive when well sailed and are still competitive in club racing. The Ranger 37 was designed to the IOR handicap rule and was the last production boat to win the Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC is a winter ocean race out of Miami, Florida). The Ranger 32 is still competitive under PHRF handicap. While the Ranger 29 was designed to rate well under a number of handicap rules including the CCA and IOR, the boat does not fare so well under Portsmouth or PHRF.

In 1967, the one-off Mull 30, a mahogany strip planked sloop designed for the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco scored an impressive win during the famous 1969 Miami to Nassau SORC race besting all the other class favorites and larger ocean classes. The success of the boat design was recreated known as Belvedere 30 in fiberglass by local San Francisco boat builder and rigging specialist Hank Easom. The hull design continued with modernized cabin top configurations to become the popular Chico 30 built in New Zealand. Many Chico 30s have been successfully campaigned and even circumnavigated the globe.

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