Discovering the story of designer Thomas Tison

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Sailing, the great excellences of the sailing world tell their stories and reveal their projects. In this column, discover all the companies and people who have made important contributions to the multifaceted world of sailing, which enables us all to go to sea in all forms and contexts.

In this installment, we take you on a tour of the history and news of Thomas Tison, whose design philosophy is to put culture, in all its forms, at the center.

My boats out of chorus and out of time

Journey to discover the story of designer Thomas Tison, his strange wood and carbon boats, and his design philosophy that focuses on culture. In all its forms.

We’ve been chasing him for a while-busy as he is among his decidedly off-the-chart boats (his daysailer is coming soon
L’Été
) and the America’s Cup – but we finally “hunted” him down, Thomas Tison. One of France’s most original designers and on the crest of a wave. When we meet him he is beaming, because the 48-footer he designed,
Elida
, made of wood and carbon (sic!) has just finished a near-perfect Fastnet, second in Admiral’s 1 category, ahead of “behemoths” like the wal-lyrocket51
Django
and several TP52s. And he feels like talking.

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1976. Killer whale sinks Giorgio Falck’s Guia III

Who is Thomas Tison and what is he doing today?
He is someone who was born with the ball of technological evolution, speed, beauty and the Mediterranean in his soul. These are the four “columns” on which I base my work and my choices, including my life. Today I live in Villefranche-sur-mer, between Nice and Monaco, where I have my studio (Thomas Tison Yacht Design & Engineering, ed.) and soon my shipyard. Our team consists of a group of six main specialists who cover every area of boat design. We work on three different “areas”: one is what I call advanced naval architecture projects, such as America’s Cup, racing boats, foilers, Defense work where technologies are moving forward expeditiously. The second area is our “Timeless Collection,” which is our production of boats that mix handcrafted construction and high technology-a real “high-end” range. And then there are the superyachts and custom boats above 16 meters, both sail and power. Otherwise, my life is pretty simple, I enjoy sports driving, sailing, skiing, playing tennis, and spending good time with my friends….

Your first contact with water?
I was only a few months old. I grew up on the tip of Ile de Re, an island opposite La Rochelle. My family lived here eight months of the year, a few hundred meters from the sea. We had many boats: in the garden, on the beach. I had a happy childhood, imagine a child running around barefoot between boats and garages…. Every day we could choose between various dinghies and bigger boats: for fishing, or for sailing. My grandfather loved sailing, I learned from him-I can’t remember how many boats he had, too! Boats were the family topic of conversation, all the time! Then, of course, I spent a lot of time cruising, racing, and building boats-a constant, eternal cycle for me!

When did you decide you were going to be a designer?
When I was (very) young. I was fascinated every year by what was new on the boat market. Always faster, more beautiful: some, then had an almost magical aura. There are boats that are so beautiful that you don’t even dare to approach them, and I think that feeling made me wonder who was behind them. If you discover sailing, you can’t help but wonder who are the great designers from whose pencils boats are born! Before I was 10 years old, I had already learned the notion of “center of gravity” in naval architecture books, long before school. Growing up, I played classical music at a high level, but at 18 I decided to step away from it and spent the 10-12 hours a day I would have spent playing designing boats. I didn’t feel like studying, so I sent an e-mail to Juan Kouyoumdjian, who I knew was in town. But he was in his early days, not yet the “name” he is today. So I started building boats in a local boatyard, as an employee: there I realized it was better to study. I moved to Southampton to study yacht design, and after a year I went back to Juan K. A great experience for me: the firm was engaged in the design of the legendary VOR 70 ABN Amro, after the Volvo Ocean Race victory in 2007 the whole office was “hired” by the America’s Cup teams in Valencia, including me. I returned to Southampton after the America’s Cup a couple of years later to finish my degree. Then, I studied Aerospace Engineering and started taking Economics at the London School of Economics, but at some point I realized I didn’t need to study anymore and officially founded my own company.

Has your musical experience also helped you in your work?
Today I still play classical music 10-12 hours a week. I design boats with the same “mindset” with which I approach practicing a musical instrument, always striving for a certain perfection and balance.

Your philosophy as a designer, in a nutshell.
My goal is to inspire people, to show a different way: as human beings, in my opinion we should yes strive to bring something “singular” to the table. But without trying too hard. The beauty of coming up with something singular and simple is that it doesn’t take away from others, there is no competition, it makes life better for everyone… Over time, then, I discovered that I like to imagine the future. This is the focus of our advanced naval architecture division…. Playing with the notion of time, both bringing the future into the present day and the past into the present. This is my recipe for creating something different without affecting functionality, which on sailboats must never fail. Boats must sail well.

Why wood?
Wood has always been present in my life. As a young man I sailed aboard a beautiful wooden yacht, all painted mahogany. On the other hand, my grandparents had a rather large furniture factory, which they had to close: mindful of that, I never, ever wanted to build wooden boats. Wood in sailing was emblematic of amateur construction, tradition, slowness-none of that interested me. But one day, I was asked to engineer the structure of Dream Symphony, a 141-meter Dykstra-designed all-wood boat. Step by step, I found the square and realized that I could create something interesting with wood. Thus was born the Exoskin construction method that I developed and that we still use today with our boats. Wood brings the warmth that I love and the precious finish forces us to behave differently in the design phase. When we build a boat out of wood we have to bend it. There is a natural tendency to be much more detail-oriented, and sharp corners disappear during the design process…. Often, today, the most expensive sailboats also represent the worst designs-an absurd logic from which we try to escape with boats like Elida and then L’Été. My idea is that boats today should be at least on the same level as their environment. A boat in our “Timeless” range is like wearing a tuxedo. That’s what I like about it….

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2022. Rondetto. The incredible barge that won’t die

What are the “milestones” of your career?
Let’s start with the near past. Seeing Elida battle for victory in her category at the Fastnet was splendid. Every America’s Cup you participate in, then, is a big “milestone”-you see immediately on the ground the efforts made in the design phase. With INEOS (the British America’s Cup team, ed.) I was the architect responsible for the construction, reliability, and innovation behind some of the systems, and winning the Louis Vuitton Cup made me more than happy. The America’s Cup is not just sailing. It is design competition, espionage, team battles, and extraordinary characters. If you want pure sailing, however, that is SailGP today. Today I am looking forward to nothing more than the start of the shipyard where we will soon build our boats: design and construction today must go hand in hand…. Then this year, I really enjoyed sailing on the 1908 Classic Yacht Mariska and organizing the Mediterranean distance records we set (2 hours 50 from San Remo to Villefranche). Sailing on the Mariska was one of my childhood dreams, and bringing people together to sail in a pleasant atmosphere is a goal of mine for the next decades. I often plant seeds like these, and then I let them grow…. And this aspect I believe will grow.

What did the America’s Cup experience teach you?
It is very rare to find a place on earth where the best resources are there to develop and progress. When you build a normal boat, only a fraction of the budget goes to design, but here we are talking about multiplying the value of the boat and an extra week of design can make the difference between losing or winning the America’s Cup. Early on, during my first America’s Cup in Valencia with Mascalzone Latino, I also discovered how important construction was to designing the best boats. You can’t design a foil if you don’t know what it’s made of. You can’t add more windows if you don’t understand the loads at sea…. This interface between design and what we call structural architecture is at the heart of my work, and the two combined are what is commonly known as architecture. Now there is more of an exchange between what I bring to the America’s Cup and what the America’s Cup brings to me. For example, a research we did on our Mini 6.50 prototype was applied to INEOS Britannia…

Designers (past and present) who have inspired you?
I am more inspired by artists (James Tissot in painting, French multi-instrumentalist French Kiwi Juice in music), Mediterranean culture, and designers or architects outside of sailing (Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster). But I certainly look to the legacy of Herreshoff or Fife to study how they dealt with certain situations. Both had their own shipyard, both were involved in the America’s Cup, and so they are an inspiration to me as a person more than as a designer….

Dutiful question. Future plans?
We will soon be commercially launching a foiling drift, and of all the projects, this is the one I am most looking forward to. Because it will come not only with technological advances, but also with financial innovation and a design that encompasses so much culture. Bringing culture back into sailing is critical today, it’s free and it makes the world much more enjoyable for everyone. I also look forward to seeing L’Été come to life, the new America’s Cup and the superyachts that will see the light of day in five years…

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