Sometime in the mid-1970’s, Eric Schlageter partnered with Scott Graham to form the Chicago-based G&S. Their first success was the ‘Chocolate Chips’, a ¾ ton racer of 1977 which won the 1978 ¾ Ton NAs and placed 3rd in the Worlds. Their designs quickly made their mark on the Great Lakes, national and international racing scene. Their work got the attention of S2 Yachts of Holland, MI. The boat builder was looking to make an upgrade to their line of family cruisers, and commissioned G&S to design the S2 7.9m. The boat became an instant hit, and was extremely successfull on the race course. G&S drew several more models for S2, which over the next few years built several hundred of their designs. When S2 Yachts got out of the sailboat business in the late eighties, G&S stayed busy with with custom racing designs to the IOR and MORC rules. They joined the design team for Chicago YC’s America’s Cup challenge, ‘Heart of America’. The partnership ended in 1989 when Graham took a position as an offshore technical director with the USYRU, and Schlageter joined SAIC, a firm involved the Americas Cup Yacht development, as well as US military contracts. Eric Schlageter died in 2009.
