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Rogue Roost, US 21480
Last update: 1978
1978 Plan Bill Cook, built by Eric Goetz, cold molded wooden

1978 From Facebook 2024 "Brand new Bill Cook design (Rogues Roost) launched for the SORC. Ken Comerier (sp) from Horizon Sails, Bob Barton (sp), Bill Cook, Perry Lewis, me, I’m forgetting who else. Came in #2 behind Stagg on Mr Jumpa that year. Some very competitive racing."
February, SORC, Florida: 2e/?? Classe D, Bill COOK
From One Ton Class Facebook 2014,

August "Sail",


Harbor Springs: ?e/?? 
From Facebook 2024,


Late 1970's Maryland Governor's Cup: ?e/??

1978 "The New York Times",

MIAMI, Feb. 19—Seven years ago William Cook, who is now 37 years old, was teaching drama and 18th century English literature to young women at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y. But that was not his calling. Tomorrow Bill Cook will jump off for the Bahamas in the annual Miami-Nassau Ocean Race as skipper, owner and designer of a little boat called Rogue's • Roost, a 35-foot sloop that stands better chance than most of the 90 entries to win a prize.
Cook's vocational leap from academics to naval architecture required years of correspondence courses, night study and an apprenticeship under another designer, Bruce Kirby. Rogue's Roost is Cook's first product and she has done extremely well among the three dozen new yachts built for this winter's Southern Ocean Racing Conference schedule. •
There are 88 yachts racing on the southern circuit in six classes; 25 of the smallest ones in Rogue's Roost's Class D of Division Two. In the Lipton cup’ event, a 135-mile overnight race across the Gulf Stream and back that ended yesterday, Cook's yacht placed cecond to Mista Jumpa, and her overall record for the series is one first. place and three seconds within the class.
Only Williwaw, a 45tfoot sloop from Perth Amboy, N.J., unbeaten in Class B, the 51-foot Acadia from New Orleans with four firsts in Class A and Mista Jumpa have more impressive records. Mista Jumpa has a fourth and three firsts and leads Rogue's Roost by 1.5 points-1% boat placings—in the class standings after 850 miles of racine.
Although the Lipton Cup race was testing, the 180-mile passage to Nassau will be even more so, with the key part to be sailed in the dark around the treacherous coral reefs beyond the Great Isaac Light at the entrance to the Bahamas. Two yachts have been lost in those waters in recent S.O.R.C. campaigns, Wimoweh in 1974 and Merry E in 1976.
In this race there are contrasting ways to go to Nassau, one being to hang to the weather rail aboard Rogue's Roost. Another would be to contemplate the ocean's crests from the spacious after deck of Ondine, a 79-foot ketch that has such ‘creature -comforts as air conditioning, television and sometimes croissants for break-’ fast.
Because of the handicapping systems used in ocean racing, the chances of winning a class prize are a lot stronger for Rogue's Roost than for Ondine, the largest vessel in the fleet. The current crop of young naval architects like German Frers, Ron Holland, Scott Kaufman and Doug Peterson have been successful in building so much speed and strength into the medium-sized and smaller offshoie racing yachts (below 45 feet. in overall length) that the so-called maxi-yachts like Ondine seldom stand a chance unless a hurricane comes along.
Visitors aboard Rogue's Roost at dockside here need remind themselves constantly that this pleasant little cockleshell is indeed a rugged ocean racer. She is fat and round with a clean deck, low cabin housing, and spacious cockpit. Below she is open and unencumbered, in total a vessel that seems entirely suitable for a weekend trip out Long Island Sound to Block Island and not much more.
Cook, who lives in Greenwich, Conn., admits that the smaller yachts in the One Ton Class, like Rogue's Roost, are sailing just about on their limits as to crew and yacht endurance in the longer S.O.R.C. races like St. Petersburg-to-Fort Lauderdale, 366 miles, which takes almost three days.
Rogue's Roost sails with six hands plus Cook. He has no specific duties but does the navigating and makes the final decisions after corporate discussion with Ken Cormier, his top helms- man, and others.
What a lot of old-timors wonder about is how well these fast little buckets like Rogue's Roost with their go-go style would do in a longer and possibly more testing ocean event like the 650 mile Newport-to-Bermuda race, which comes up this June.
“They're nothing but canoes, oceangoing canoes,” says George Van, veteran from Detroit who has been sailing on the southern circuit for 40 years.
Rogue's Roost is handsome. She is 7,500-pound wood boat built inethe new cold-mold process—four layers of thin one-eighth inch cedar planking laid over mahogany stringers, bound with epoxy resin. There is a see-through layer of Fiberglas over the outside, but Cook thinks the hull is so strong the layer was unnecessary. Eric Goetz of Bristol, R.I.. was the builder last year, and the sails are by Horizon of Stamford, Conn.
Apart from the pleasure of participation in one of yachting's great events, Cook and Rogue's Roost are here for a distinct purpose—to launch his career as a designer.
“I realized,” Cook said, “that to get somewhere I had to establish a name so that people would know me. That meant racing, and the No. 1 place for display in this country is the southern circuit. So here I am.”