The original Pocket Rocket, designed Gary Mull, was first conceived and launched in the early 1980s. It immediately set new performance standards for boats in its class and today still dominates race courses as evidenced by a first place overall win in the 2003 Whidbey Island Race Week, one of the top ten regattas in North America . The radical design of the first Pocket Rockets introduced many revolutionary concepts which are in widespread use today.

Mull, well known for his groundbreaking designs, such as the forward-rudder 12-meter “ USA ” (sailed by Tom Blackaller in Perth in 1986), successfully designed and captured a perfect balance of performance, stability, affordability, and aesthetics with the Pocket Rocket. A radical departure in yachting design, the original Pocket Rocket revolutionized sailing, and today the boat still embodies leading design characteristics, producing exceptional racing and cruising performance.

Built in the 1980s, the original 18 Pocket Rockets immediately raised the bar in sailing performance. With a 21½ foot water line almost equalling the boat’s 22 foot length, and a 9½ foot beam, typical of boats over 33 feet, the Pocket Rocket was exhilarating to race and comfortable to cruise. The surviving boats are spread across North America at various yacht clubs and are still very competitive.

In the early 1990s Canadian Ron Kent teamed up with Jim Antrim, another world-recognized naval architect and previous employee of Gary Mull, to bring the Pocket Rocket into the 1990s with a pilot run of 3 boats. Ron brought over 30 years of expertise in design, tooling, and manufacturing of fibreglass, plastics, as well a love of sailing to the project. Ingenious laminate schedules reduced the boat’s weight in half, while proprietary keel and bowsprit modifications and the use of modern materials and manufacturing methods, combined to produce excellent performance in all variety of weather conditions, making this one of the best racing/cruising yachts in its class.

Renamed the ROCKET, it was created to bring an affordable sportboat, combining state-of-the-art technology and design with simplicity of operation, to both the racer and the day sailor. Exceptional quality and dependability, including a retractable keel and a deck-stepped mast produced a boat that was easy to trailer, launch, and sail. The result was one of the fastest, lightest, racing/cruising yachts on the market.

The genius in Mull ’s design of the boat rests in the hull lines and efficient hydrodynamic shape, which contribute to a reduced displacement, increased stability, and superior performance in a variety of wind and water conditions. Planing is achieved in as little as 10 knots of wind, which is significant as most racing in North America is typically done in winds under 12 knots. In addition, the generous 9½’ beam gives the Rocket 22 a wide cockpit for comfortable crewing, comparable to that of a boat in the 30-33 foot range. The aggressive waterline length (LWL), very noticeable when viewing the plumb bow and stern, is close to its overall length (LOA). Since the theoretical maximum speed is a function of the waterline length, a long LWL provides for a potentially very fast boat.

The original 1983 Pocket Rocket had a displacement of 2500 pounds, which is still reasonably light compared to other similar boats. The new 1994 Rocket had a displacement of only 1600 pounds, which is extremely light. The resulting boat surfs and planes in nominal wind, is incredibly manoeuvrable, and is easily trailered. The new Rocket 22 will also target the displacement at approximately 1600 lbs.

The various dimensions and design criteria used to describe a sailboat have relevant meaning for the sailor, yet to the uninitiated they may seem esoteric and somewhat abstract. It is important to understand, however, that behind these figures there are countless hours of experienced design directly influenced by sound science and physics, including hydrodynamics, propulsion, friction, drag, buoyancy, and water/hull interaction. With the Pocket Rocket in the 1980s, Gary Mull achieved almost perfect harmony between art and science, resulting in one of the most advanced, balanced, and competitive boats in its class which is still leading the way today.

These figures ultimately became the physical geometry of the Pocket Rocket, the likes of which have stood the test of time. In addition to the flexibility of the boat for racing and cruising purposes, the main outstanding feature that truly sets the Pocket Rocket apart from other sailboats in its class is the design of its hull.

Several dominant features of Mull ’s design particularly stand out:

These key features combine to produce a boat that sits and performs on the water like no other. Most small keelboats of this size have nearly vertical topsides back to the 30-40% range of the overall length aft of the bow, but the Pocket Rocket’s topsides flare and increase dramatically just a short distance behind the bow and continue to do so steadily until near the transom. The bottom of the Pocket Rocket is extremely flat from the bow to the stern with a section about 4.5 feet wide near the middle of the boat with no curvature at all. With such a wide, flat bottom and displacement of 2500 lbs. (new Rocket 22 to be approximately 1600 lbs.), the maximum draft of the hull is only about 6 inches.

Furthermore, the boat demonstrates an amazing ability to heel substantially without developing much weather helm. In contrast, when heeled beyond 15-20 degrees, other boats tend to round up into the wind because the typically narrow bow dives and the aft rises. Mull’s design resists this action, with the flared topsides at the bow absorbing the heeling effect thereby preventing the center of buoyancy from shifting that far aft and affecting the helm. Gary Mull believed that the bow should stay in the water to maintain maximum average sailing length and to dampen pitching. Indeed, when discussing the Pocket Rocket in 1983 he said, “I’m not a believer in entry angle being critically important. A lot of the time, even though it seems intuitively wrong, it pays to make the front end of the boat more buoyant. The prismatic coefficient is going up so quickly that the slight bit of extra resistance in one area you more than make up for by dropping considerably in another.”

The apparent opposition, therefore, between the positive effect of such powerful bilges on the Pocket Rocket, and the negative effect of larger wave and bow entry angles, has been handled elegantly and technically by Gary Mull. These are ground-breaking technical achievements in their own right, and with the Pocket Rocket they are combined and contribute to outstanding racing and cruising performance.

While unheralded at the time, the Pocket Rocket is now widely acknowledged as being the boat that invented and defined the sport boat market. As with many trail blazers it did not initially gain widespread acceptance due to its being “ahead of the curve” and sadly the market was not ready for design departures introduced by Mull. But a testament to his genius is that virtually every boat designed and built today in some way owes a debt of gratitude to the original Pocket Rocket.