GRAHAME SHANNON
 

Name:  Grahame Shannon
Company: Avia Design Inc.
Country:  Canada
email: designer@aviadesign.com
website:  www.aviadesign.com

Design philosophy: Beauty sells boats. Beauty is essentially free, since it costs no more to build a well designed, lovely boat than to build an ugly, ill designed one. Moreover, good production design can actually reduce the cost of construction.

Grahame Shannon believes in leaving a small footprint on earth and consciously limits himself to design projects which are ecologically friendly, fuel efficient, and fun.  He does not believe in giant fuel guzzlers or cannot justify megayachts.   He enjoys designing small, simple boats, which can be more fun, and don't make a huge dent in the planet's dwindling resources. 

Brief Biography:
Grahame Shannon was born in Grenada, the British West Indies to a nutmeg plantation family.  He immigrated to Canada at the age of 4 when the political climate in Grenada turned sour.  After his schooling in Alberta, be worked as a computer engineer for more than 10 years  for IBM, MAI and Telex.  In 1979, he took a drastic cut in pay to pursue his dream of becoming a yacht designer.  In 1984, he bought his first computer, a Radio Shack Tandy 2000 and worked on developing  tools for yacht design.  As an offshoot from his yacht design work, AutoSHIP was born and in a span of five years, AutoSHIP became the world's leading PC-based hull design software with clients from over 40 countries.  When the company got too big, Mr. Shannon sold the company and went back again to his first love - yacht design.  He is currently semi-retired and very selective about his projects.  He remains actively racing and cruising.

Accomplishments:
Grahame Shannon is most famous for being the founder of AutoSHIP Systems Inc., the developer/publisher of the PC-based AutoSHIP hull design software.  The company was since sold in 1993 and continues to operate as a software developer/publisher.

In 1995, he was part of the America cup challenge design team, America Cube for the yacht Mighty Mary.  He was also part of the design team for the most popular dinghy in the world - the Walker Bay 8.  Today, he does custom design work for private clients, and some consulting work for production companies.

Some of his sailing adventures include sailing from BC to Hawaii on his self-built folkboat, circumnavigating Vancouver Island, cruising the Carribean, and the canals in Southern France.  The next voyage on his agenda is a three-month sailing from BC to Alaska - this time, on a Hanse 37.


Notable production designs:
Amazon line of steel boats
   Amazon 29, Amazon 37, Amazon 41, Amazon 44, Amazon 47
Coast sailboats
  Coast 30, Coast 34, Coast Slingshot 34
MotorCat 29 Power Catamaran
Classico 20 Runabout, Classico Veloce 20, Classico Veloce 25
Avia Express 36

Custom Boats:
Tina Christine
Terra Nova
Dindingwe

Below is a 20 foot rowboat aluminum design by Grahame Shannon.



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