Color Coordinated

Only two colors are acceptable for painting a boat: white and black. And only a fool would paint one black. At least that’s what Nathanael Greene Herreshoff believed. Herreshoff, the “Wizard of Bristol,” was a naval architect, marine engineer, inventor and shipbuilder, and perhaps the greatest yacht designer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Included in his catalog of more than 2,000 designs are the successful America’s Cup defenders in six consecutive challenges; Herreshoff skippered one of them himself, the 124-foot Vigilant in 1893.

But really, Capt. Nat didn’t have much of an eye for color. What would he think of the rainbow of hulls we find in a typical marina today? In