James Roderick Macalpine-Downie[1] (9 May 1934 – 9 January 1986), known as Rod Macalpine-Downie, was an English multihull sailboat designer and sailor.[2][3]
Son of Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald James Macalpine-Downie (died 1958), M.B.E., Royal Tank Regiment,[4] of a landed gentry family of Appin,[5] he was a King's Scholar at Eton with a focus on biology, but seriously considered a career as a concert violinist.[2] Macalpine-Downie and his wife, Shirley Agnes (née Reid), had two sons and a daughter.[6]
After seeing a Shearwater catamaran while chicken farming in Scotland, Macalpine-Downie resolved to design a superior vessel, producing the Thai Mk4 catamaran.[2]
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.[2]
Macalpine-Downie is said to have been the first to try both 'una rig' and wing masts.[2]
His two most famous designs were the high-speed Crossbow multihulls which set sailing speed records in the 1970s and 1980s.[2] The Crossbow proa set a speed record of 26.30 knots in 1973. Its successor, Crossbow II, set a new record in 1980 of 36.00 knots, a mark which was not surpassed till 1986.
Macalpine-Downie died in 1986, aged 52. A new Crossbow design was partly completed, which Macalpine-Downie believed was capable of 70+ knots.[2]