Roderick Macalpine Downie

(James) Roderick Macalpine Downie (9 May 1934 – 9 January 1986) was an English multihull sailboat designer and sailor.
Son of Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald James Macalpine Downie (died 1958), M.B.E., Royal Tank Regiment, of a landed gentry family of Appin, he was a King's Scholar at Eton with a focus on biology, but seriously considered a career as a concert violinist. Macalpine Downie and his wife, Shirley Agnes (née Reid), had two sons and a daughter.
Design career.
After seeing a Shearwater catamaran while chicken farming in Scotland, Downie resolved to design a superior vessel, producing the Thai Mk4 catamaran.
The Thai Mk4 was extremely successful, winning all six races of the 1962 European 'one of a kind' regatta, in addition to the first International Catamaran Challenge in 1963.
Legacy.
Downie is said to have been the first to try both 'una rig' and wing masts. Later Crossbow designs won multiple speed competitions.
Death.
Downie died in 1986, aged 52. A new Crossbow design was partly completed, which Downie believed was capable of 70+ knots.