In 2001, SAIL’s then executive editor, Charles Mason, awarded Garry Hoyt the magazine’s Industry Award for Leadership, noting his “insatiable desire to make sailing simpler,” and how his seemingly limitless ideas had benefited all sailors. Creating products and lines of boats with that overarching goal—to make sailing easier for more people to enjoy—resulted in innovations like Hoyt’s popular Freedom Yachts, cat-ketches with freestanding rigs, and the Hoyt Jib Boom, popularized in the early 1990s on the beautiful Alerion Express 28 and a forerunner to today’s common self-tacking jibs.

Forward was the way he was always looking when it came to sailing and design.

“Sailing quite correctly places high value on tradition,” Hoyt wrote on his website, “but new advances require the fuel of fresh thinking. And new materials are constantly opening up new design possibilities.”

“Hoyt was an early advocate of updating Olympic Classes and suggested including a foiling moth, the windsurfer, kite board, and speedy singlehanded A Cat multihulls long before anyone else,” writes Gary Jobson in Hoyt’s National Sailing Hall of Fame biography.

A three-time Olympian, 2022 inductee into the National Sailing Hall of Fame, visionary sailor, inventor, writer, and advertising executive, Hoyt died at age 93 on March 31. From his obituary:

Garry was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Robert T. and Frances M. (Garrison) Hoyt on April 7, 1931. He was predeceased by his parents and former wife, Patricia T. Hoyt. Garry grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey. The family summered in Beachwood, New Jersey, and were members of the Beachwood Yacht Club, where Garry learned to sail at the age of 8.

He graduated from Plainfield High School Class of 1948 and Colgate University Class of 1952. He was captain of the swim team at both schools. This was followed by service to his country in the United States Coast Guard. In 1956 he earned a graduate degree from American Institute of Foreign Trade, now named Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona.

Garry’s first career was with the leading global advertising and marketing agency of Young & Rubicam in New York City. After a short time, he was promoted to senior vice president and creative director, to lead business operations and creative services for all Y&R offices in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Latin America and the Far East. The 25 years spent in the Caribbean allowed him to focus on his favorite sport of sailing during his free time.

He represented Puerto Rico in the Olympic Games in Mexico, 1968, Germany, 1972, and Canada, 1976. In St. Thomas, USVI (1970), he became the first Sunfish World Champion. During his years of competitive sailing, he won many trophies in the Caribbean Ocean Racing Circuit and in later years at the Nantucket Yacht Club. He was the first skipper on an Alerion 26, the smallest boat in the fleet over the finish line, to become the overall winner of the 2006 Opera House Cup in Nantucket.

Garry retired from Y&R after 25 years to pursue his unwavering passion for sailing. He moved to Newport, Rhode Island, in 1980 where he began his second career. He founded Freedom Yachts and for the next 25 years he was a yacht designer and innovative entrepreneur. He was honored with SAIL Magazine’s 1999 Award for innovation and in 2001 their Award for Industry Leadership. To acknowledge his many accomplishments, he was inducted into the Barnegat Bay Sailing Hall of Fame in 2008 and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2022.

Garry was the inventor and owner of 10 patents. He was the author of five books, his first being Go For The Gold, written in 1971. He was the architect behind countless designs under the Freedom Yachts, Escape, and Alerion brands.

In the words of Bill Schanen, Publisher and Editor of Sailing Magazine, “These boats were the brainchild of one of the most innovative minds in the world of sailing, that of Garry Hoyt. This hard-core sailing competitor and savvy businessman had a single cause: to make sailing swifter, safer and simpler. He was a world champion sailor, Olympic competitor, yacht designer, widget inventor and book author. Garry Hoyt was an authentic Renaissance man of sailing, indeed.”

Garry was a member of The New York Yacht Club, the Nantucket Yacht Club, the Ida Lewis Yacht Club, the Storm Trysail Club, and the Naval War College Foundation.

He leaves his wife of 43 years, Donna Robinson Hoyt, his sister-in-law, Janet L. Robinson, his children: Mary C. Brittingham (David) of Washington, DC, Jeffrey T. Hoyt (Yolanda) of Boynton Beach, FL, Eric G. Hoyt (Lilian) of Fort Lauderdale, FL, five grandchildren, four great grandchildren, his brothers, Robert T. Hoyt, Jr. of Newtown Square, PA and Timothy S. Hoyt of Pine Beach, NJ, several nieces, nephews and cousins.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Sail Newport or the National Sailing Hall of Fame, both of which are in Newport, Rhode Island.