Milton Miller
Owner and visionary of Miller Special Yachts, a former software engineer, Milton started this business
in response to his own frustration in finding a sailboat that met his exacting demands. Ever the perfectionist,
he began this journey, only to find that such a boat did not exist. Undaunted, he then hunted down the
capabilities needed to produce such a boat, assembled a design and production team, and began this venture.
A shrewd judge of talent, Milton prides himself on his ability to find and engage the most talented people for his projects. As owner and visionary, Milton focuses on the development of the projects and finding the necessary talents and resources to reach its goals. In conjunction with his search for innovative technology, design creativity, and production competence, Milton has identified and assembled a team with impressive technical and business credentials.
Sven Oftedal
Sven was born in Åkrehamn, Norway, a small fishing village on the southwestern coast where he was raised by
his grandparents. His grandfather was a captain and owner of a freight carrying ketch in his younger years,
and in later times, spent two months out of each year as captain of a fishing vessel traveling to Iceland.
In his early youth, Sven spent a lot of time with his grandfather, who taught him about ships and small craft.
His great-grandfather, who was a carpenter and a boat builder, taught him how boats were designed and built.
Greatly influenced by both these men, Sven loved to draw boats, and built ship models and his own sea-going
kayaks. At age 14, he signed up as a cabin boy on a fishing boat and spent two months fishing for herring
off the coast of Iceland, and later did a years’ stint in the Norwegian Merchant Marine.
During his boyhood, he took frequent trips to the United States to be with his mother, who was living in New England. While staying in New Bedford, Massachusetts, area he spent much of his time down by the docks talking to the fisherman and watching the boats going in and out of the harbor. At 16, he moved to the US permanently and entered the building trade, becoming a skilled craftsman. Never losing his love of boats, Sven owned two motor cruisers that he enjoyed on Long Island Sound over the years. He also continued to build models in his spare time. Other interests included fast motorcycles, race cars and camping. In the early ‘80's, he sustained an injury to his right arm that prevented him from working full time as a finish carpenter. He then turned to architectural drafting and some limited finish carpentry. He spent the next 15 years designing and drawing commercial and residential buildings, and continued to do custom woodworking. Model building and boat design were part of his leisure time activities, as well as motorcycling, and building stock cars for racing.
Eventually, Sven decided to take up sailing. After owning a couple of catamarans, he bought a 20' double-ended North Sea style cruising sailboat, which he enjoys every summer. In the fall of 2000, Sven injured his left shoulder, and was given the opportunity to change careers by a very perceptive vocational counselor who had seen Sven’s boat drawings. Together, they investigated the courses and schools available, and chose the Yacht Design School. Sven and his wife moved to Eastport for him to study under Tom MacNaughton, and worked on several design projects at his yacht design firm.
Michael Chudy
Michael has family ties to Eastport, historically called Moose Island, that go back to the 1890’s. His
maternal grandfather lived here and in Jonesport during the time his family operated the N.M. Parker Sardine
Cannery on Sea Street. He has lived throughout much of the Northeast, spending many years in the Berkshire
Hills of western Massachusetts.
Michael learned to sail on Olympic Class Solings and enjoyed single handing them out of Boston and around the Islands beyond. In the early 1990’s he spent many winters frostbite racing J-24s in Boston Harbor. In the summers he sailed his O’Day Daysailer “Adina” in the lakes of southern Vermont and made a number of trips from Mystic to Maine and back on cruising sailboats. He sailed and raced quite a bit in the Boston to Cape Cod area, participated in the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta and made an offshore passage from Antigua to Bermuda. Though an avid fan of sailboat racing, his offshore passages have solidified his appreciation for sea kindliness and seaworthiness in boat design.
His interest in sailing led him to enroll in a yacht design program, and after two years of study he and his wife Kathi moved to Eastport, where he began work with Tom MacNaughton, a local yacht designer. As he became more proficient he found himself producing most of the manual drawings for the firm. Early in his yacht design apprenticeship he started working with Computer Aided Design software, and taught the Rhino CAD Course for the Yacht Design School here in Eastport. He authored three of the eleven lessons in the school’s CAD course and extensively revised portions of others as the Rhino 3D software evolved. He also developed and taught an introductory course in Rhino CAD for those students needing a broader knowledge of CAD basics before starting the Marine CAD course. During the summer of 2005 he developed illustrations for the “Excellence in Hull Lines” course offered by the E-Marine Training Program through Professional Boatbuilder Magazine, and taught by the Yacht Design School. Other projects this past year include teaching Lofting to first year students at the Washington County Community College Boat School, completion of a rig design and all hand drawn plans for the design and construction of a 60', 160,000 pound Colin Archer sailing yacht, and lines development and rig design for a 36’ Chinese rig sailing yacht.
Michael holds a professional chef’s degree from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and a Tool and Die Makers Certificate from the Western Mass Precision Institute. He has owned and operated a successful auto related business and has designed and built his own log home. When not thinking about boats, his other interests include cartography, sculpture, architecture, woodworking, skiing, snorkeling and cooking.
Dave Tether
Mr. Tether has over 29 years experience in programming/analysis, hardware development and major systems
development for scientific and business applications. His software and hardware development experience
includes mainframe, mini, micro and special applications computers. Mr. Tether supported the Naval Air
Warfare Center and various other Government agencies for 17 years in program/project management capacities
and has been involved in the start-up of several successful businesses. Mr. Tether has 16 years experience
in management of personnel involved in metrology, engineering, and all phases of communication/computer
security and software/hardware design, computer and network security, and secure information management.
Mr. Tether also has 3 US Patents.
In the 1980s, Dave Tether worked at the Patuxent River Naval Air Warfare Center developing systems that collect and analyze the electromagnetic signatures emitted by various aircraft. He managed the project to build the world’s largest nuclear detonation simulator.
In the late 1980s he joined up with an inventor named Jonathan Edwards from Leonardtown, Md., with whom he co-invented the concept of the Electric Wheel, essentially a wind-power/electric hybrid motor that uses a sailboat’s free-spinning propeller to recharge its batteries.
In 1994, Kevin Smith of NASA’s Mid-Atlantic Technology Applications Center got wind of the idea and made a deal: NASA would have the rights to use the Electric Wheel concept in space, and in return Solomon Technologies, where Dave Tether was CEO, would benefit from the research and development that emerged. Ultimately, NASA used the motor concept in its Mars rover.
Today, Dave Tether is CEO of Electric Marine Propulsion, a hybrid propulsion developer and manufacturer.
Specific accomplishments:
- US Patent 5,575,730 Multiple-Input Infinite-Speed Integral Motor and Transmission.
- US Patent 5,851,162 System and Apraratus for A Multiple Input and Dual Output Electric Differential Motor Transmission.
- US Patent 5,863,228 Method and Apparatus for Propelling a Marine Vessel
- US Trademark Reg. No. 2,300,535
- US Trademark Reg. No. 2,791,549
- US Trademark Reg. No. 2,854,006
- Development and Integration of the Navy's first Automated Calibration Procedure for Signal Generators and Attenuators.
- Development and Integration of the Navy's first Automated System Level Aircraft Spectral Signature and Electromagnetic Compatibility Evaluator.
- Member of IEEE 802 Local Area Network Standards Development committee for Logical Link Control, Bus Access Methods, and Physical Layer Specifications in support of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) which later became Internet.
- Published and Presented Paper on Automated Electromagnetic Compatibility testing for Society of Flight Test Engineers.
- Authored and Taught course on Computer Communications and Network Development and set up training programs for the Polish Telecommunications Agency in Warsaw, Poland.