Roberto Barros and John Guzzwell talking about the 140 foot Mega Yacht they helped to build in cold molded construction

Roberto Barros is the founder of the office. He started a boat building career some forty years ago producing custom cruising and racing sail boats. In his search for building lighter and faster boats, he discovered that he had to brake away from the established concepts of that time. In 1964 he produced the plans for an ultra light displacement boat and built it in a very short time, with a minimum budget for the amazement of his contemporary yachtsmen. Once plans with those characteristics were difficult to be found he felt inducted to design himself and construct other sailboats of similar concept, all of them were sold to enthusiasts as soon as they were launched.
In 1967 he and his wife Eileen started a long distance cruise to the South Pacific Islands aboard an engineless light displacement twenty five foot yacht. After almost three years of a paradisiacal cruise, they received the visit of a stork, bringing them a little girl, daughter of the South Seas. The new responsibilities brought the couple back to Rio de Janeiro, where Roberto started producing in series glass fibre sailing boats. By then this was a new industrial field in his country in which he was a pioneer. Parallel to this main occupation Roberto Barros designed and built a series of I.0R. custom sailing boats that became well known regionally.
In the early eighties he was involved with a team which built the largest cold molded yacht up to that date, a one hundred and forty feet long ocean cruising sail boat, constructed at the city of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. In 1985 he launched a thirty foot double ender called Maitairoa. With this boat the Roberto Barros family lived unforgettable adventures in the southern ocean including an involuntary grounding in a lonely beach of a sub Antarctic island. After a complicated salvage operation they managed to put their boat afloat again and once no harm occurred to the boat they sailed back to Rio de Janeiro in a three thousand miles non stop trip. Later Maitairoa was sold to a lady who sailed her from Rio to Gibraltar and the French Riviera where she lives aboard presently. Meanwhile, his Tahitian daughter, Astrid Barros, decided for a career in naval architecture and with this incentive in mind Roberto Barros decided to start a yacht design office to be run as a family business. In 1987 the office was founded, having as partners Roberto and Eileen Barros, as well as Astrid Barros. Later on, Astrid married the naval architect Luis Gouveia who also became a member of the company. Astrid Barros is probably the only woman born in French Polynesia who has a Ph.D. degree in computational fluid dynamics. Being brought up among boats since her birth, she developed an early taste for everything related to the seas, mainly the fast racing sailboats. She started her racing career when she was barely three years old when she helped tacking her parents sixteen foot pocket cruiser racer. As a teenager she became a keen laser and I.M.S. racer and parallel she kept injecting more salt in her veins participating with the voyages of Maitairoa, her parents cruising sailboat. One of these trips was to Cape Town, South Africa, when during her short stay there, she was invited to crew a brand new I.0.R. maxi-yacht. After obtaining her degree in Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture, she specialised in hydrodynamics, later obtaining a master degree and a doctorate on this subject, never missing time to give a hand at the office and to keep the Yacht racing career going.
In the year of 2000 she was invited to participate in the Recife-Fernando de Noronha race aboard a radical racing trimaran crewed by an all woman team. They managed to be the second boat to arrive, beating the previous record for the race, loosing the first position for a larger multihull with a professional crew on board. The race committee , in a macho attitude, awarded them a six burner stove, one burner for each crew member. When her doctorate was concluded, Astrid was invited to join American Bureau of Shipping as a specialist in fluid dynamics and despite the feeling of loss at Roberto Barros Yacht Design it was impossible to deny the opportunities at her new job. After transferring the position of chief engineer to her husband, she remained on as a partner at Roberto Barros Yacht Design, and presently she is a consultant for hydrodynamic issues.
Eileen Barros is the person who runs the secretarial work at Roberto Barros Yacht Design. Being a British citizen, she is the one who takes care of spelling and grammar when dealing with the English speaking community. Eileen's experience aboard sailboats is unquestionable. Her inumerous adventures aboard tiny little boats and larger ones are related in books written by her husband and few women have had so many extraordinary experiences in a life span, like falling overboard during a capsize in the Caribbean when the engineless twenty five footer, she and her husband were sailing encountered the tail of a tropical cyclone, or being stranded on a lonely beach at the Falkland Islands during a severe storm. Presently besides being a grandmother for the second time she is having to save her skin from the sun, after many years of abuse, and for that matter she is retiring from her sailing career. But her love for boats and the enthusiasm for her work remains the same.

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In may 2007 we took the important decision of transferring the main office of our yacht design business to Perth, Western Australia, after twenty years of uninterrupted operation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Roberto Barros Yacht Design, the original company, remained operating in Rio, as a branch of the new company, now established in Australia, which is called B & G Yacht Design. The naval architect Luis Gouveia is now running the business from Perth, while Roberto Barros remains in Rio, taking care of the decisions related to the regional market, where the company have established deep roots during those twenty years of activity.
Luis Gouveia reports his first experiences in his new country: 

B & G Yacht Design – our office in Australia

Since last year, when I moved to Australia, I am involved in the task of integrating our yacht design office with this new market. The chosen city to establish our office was Perth, the capital of booming Western Australia. The nautical activity is very intense here, be it sailing, motor-boating, fishing or canoeing, either in the sheltered waters of the Swan River, or in the Indian Ocean. 

Best known by the sailing community is nearby Fremantle. Distant 15 minutes from Perth downtown but still in its metropolitan area, in the year of 1983 Fremantle hosted the first America’s Cup regatta raced outside the United States.  The town had been completely remodeled on that occasion and the complex of marinas built for the event is now being used by thousands of boaters and is also an entertainment site, with lots of restaurants and different tourist attractions. A nice place to visit there is The Western Australia Maritime Museum, where it is exposed one of the most famous Australian boats, Australia II, the first yacht to beat the Americans in more than 130 years of the America’s Cup competition.

Australia II and the Western Australia Maritime Museum
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The place I chose to settle the office was Bicton, a suburb of Perth located in the south margin of the Swan River, a stone throw from Fremantle.  Roberto Barros, my partner, who remained in Rio de Janeiro, and I, took some time in adapting to work so far apart from each other.  We communicate daily by e-mail and skype and during this time we learned to take advantage of the 11 hours time difference.  Now it is as if our office is running 24 hours nonstop, since while one of us is ending his daily routine, the other one is just beginning his day.

Luis near the Swan River

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I spent the first months in the new country trying to learn more about the local market.  I visited some boat shows, especially on the west coast, talked to boaters in the marinas and clubs and sailed in new acquaintances’ boats.  The interest in strong, safe, seaworthy, stable, reliable, easy to build, attractive and low maintenance yachts is the general rule, and in these aspects Australians don’t differ from people elsewhere. I soon learned that we are quite at ease regarding these requirements, since we also pursuit these characteristics and they belong to our design philosophy.

Luis, Astrid, Christian e Juliana in Cape Leeuwin

Cape Leeuwin lighthouse– where two oceans meet
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Since May, 2008 we have a company officially registered in Australia.  It is B & G Yacht Design and in the coming days the new name and logo will be displayed in our website.  We are quite motivated with this new challenge. More than just a new beginning, we feel that the B & G Yacht Design is an extension and a step ahead on all the hard work we had done in more than 20 years dedicated to designing yachts.