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Lars Bergstrom (born 1935 in Strängnäs, Sweden), was an aeronautical engineer and designer of racing yachts, and expermental airplanes. His experimental aeronautical innovations helped revolutionize both industries. Bergstrom started designing and building sailboats in Strängnäs, Sweden 1958 with his boyhood friend, Sven Ridder. The early designs were built for Lake Mälaren with an "engineering comes first approach." This engineering comes first approach became prevelant through all of his deisgns.

Bergstrom was one of the first racing yacht designers to incorporate aeronautical engineering into the design. He experimented with winged keels for sailboats in 1968, 15 years before the controversial winged keel on the 12-Meter Australia II upset the course of America's Cup yacht racing.

In 1975 Bergstrom moved to the United States with Ridder and started B & R Designs. The company continued to be a brain bank for some of the most gifted and controversial young aero-space engineers and yacht desingers from 1981 through to Bergstrom's death in 1997. Some of their revolionary designs included the free standing rig, Windex, a pivoting wing for shallow-draft sailboats, self propelled gliders, and the tri-pod rig.

Bergstrom designers have contributed to winning America's Cup campaigns, Whitbread Around The World Races, The Volvo Ocean Race, and all the single handed stuff.Mr. Bergstrom was a member of a three-man crew that in 1989 shaved 10 days from a 135-year-old clipper ship record. The team sailed from New York to San Francisco in 80 days aboard Thursday's Child, a 60-foot monohull built by Hunter Marine of Alachua, Fla.

Also on the trip was Warren Luhrs, president of Hunter and a world-class solo sailor. He set the standard of what could be done with an open-class monohull, Mr. Luhrs said. All of a sudden, monohulls were not just going 9 to 10 knots, they were sailing at 15 knots and more.

Mr. Bergstrom and his partner, Sven Ridder, a boyhood friend from Sweden, redesigned sailboat rigs, rudders and keels. The Windex, a wind indicator that measures the apparent wind generated by a boat's movement across water, was their invention.

Some of the larger cruising luxury yachts Farr has designed include Mirabella, Philanderer, Sojana and the two Southern Wind built 100 footers: Farewell and Farandwide.

Bergstrom was killed in 1997, while piloting one of his experimental gliders. The craft appeared to have gone into a flat spin two miles from the airport at Wauchula, Florida that caused Mr. Bergstrom, who was alone in the craft, to lose control of it.

Ocean racing[edit]Boats designed by Farr Yacht Design competed in every Whitbread Round the World Race after 1981[citation needed], and won the 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1998 races. The first Bruce Farr yacht in the Whitbread Race was the Farr-designed Ceramco New Zealand, which competed in the 1980 Whitbread Race and won the Sydney to Hobart the same year. Farr's design proved exceedingly fast, and Ceramco would have won the Round the World Race, save for an unfortunate dismasting on the first leg, a trans-Atlantic crossing. The deltas for the rest of the legs would have put Ceramco 30 hours ahead of her next competitor. This yacht was helmed and captained by New Zealand's most famous yachtsman Sir Peter Blake. [1]