Jack Setton, the French-born boatowner and self-described perfectionist who commissioned some of the most unconventional sailing yachts of the past five decades, died on 4 November at the age of 77. If his name isn't familiar, his boats might be: a 255ft ice-breaking tug converted for cruising, a 57m explorer yacht, a refitted Gulf of Mexico shrimper retrofitted with jet drives to hit 40 knots, and a 110ft maxi catamaran turned extreme bluewater cruiser.
Setton made his money marketing Pioneer car stereos, then in real estate, and assembled one of the world's most coveted racing car collections — his favourite drive was Niki Lauda's 1975 Ferrari, chosen, he said, purely for its ergonomics. That same obsession carried over to the water. He valued a yacht above all for how it felt on the helm: light, balanced, seakindly. "If the steering is heavy, the pleasure goes away," he told Yachting World.
His taste ran deliberately against the polished cruisers favoured by his peers. He grew frustrated that cruising gear — anchors, chain, water tanks — turned a 25-degree windward angle into 40, so he gravitated to purist daysailers: heavy ballast, big rudders, strong keels, nothing aboard that didn't earn its place. He worked with naval architects including German Frers, Rolf Vrolijk and Marc Lombard, built repeatedly with the composites specialist Multiplast, and had a habit of spotting young designers early, like Antoine Mainfray. His boats often carried blended names: Jaro (Jack + Rolf), Paja (Paolo + Jack), Jamain (Jack + Mainfray).
Right up to the end he had projects on the go. His final commission, Jamain, was a folding trimaran built in La Rochelle, inspired by a 12ft pedal-assisted Hobie he kept in the Virgin Islands, complete with a forward-facing helmsman's seat and joystick steering. He was also trialling JV60 daysailer Jaro from his home in Sardinia barely two years ago, sailing it into a 25-knot Mistral in his mid-seventies.
Why does this matter to anyone who sails or charters? Because Setton's commissions repeatedly previewed ideas the wider market adopted years later — the 60ft Frers daysailer Ciao Gianni, which he most regretted selling, was widely copied. He championed production builders doing things right, too: Saffier daysailers, Dragonfly trimarans, the Laser Stratos. Anyone who enjoys a cleanly engineered, no-nonsense sailing boat owes something to his impatience with compromise. He spent a lifetime proving that the joy of a boat lies in how it handles, not how big or flashy it is — a useful metric for anyone choosing a charter or their next daysailer.
