The2006 Small Craft Group Medal is awarded to Lorne Campbell for his outstanding contribution to fast powerboat design, including pioneering work on stabilised monohulls and stepped hull forms.
Lorne Campbell has been involved in the design of high-performance and racing powerboats since the early 1970s and set up his own design office in 1981. Notable race winners by Lorne Campbell have included the three-pointer "Highland Fling" of 1971, the trimaran "Skean Dhu" of 1975, (both for Lady Arran), the world offshore champion "Fina Unleaded" in 1989 and the unlimited hydroplane "Miss E-Lam" in the early 1990s.
World Record breakers have ranged from the powerful 51' Bradstone Challenger, which in 2005 completed the Round Britain circumnavigation in 27 hours and 10 minutes, beating the previous time by nearly 4 hours, to the tiny "An Stradag" which took the electric boat record at 50.825mph in 1989 and raised it to 68.09mph in 2005. These high-profile powerboat designs have been developed alongside a steady stream of good practical sportsboat and workboat designs for various boat building companies based in the UK and overseas.
In technical terms Lorne Campbell's powerboat designs have, over 35 years, explored and developed stepped, three-point and trimaran hull-forms paving the way for the evolution and refinement of his innovative and stylish aerodynamically-assisted stabilised monohulls, as demonstrated in the production "Bladerunner" design of 1995, capable of 100mph, and the all-conquering 70 knot "Bradstone Challenger".
Over the years Lorne Campbell has also made a valuable contribution to the Institution's activities with technical papers on "Modern Stepped Hull Forms" in 1994 and "Bradstone Challenger: Breaking the Round Britain Record with a Novel Hull Form" in 2006. He is also a long-standing member of the Small Craft Committee of RINA, and one of the judging panel for the BMF/RINA Concept Boat competitions.
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