Project Amazon is a custom-designed Open Class 60 sailboat that began development in 1992. Detail design took place in 1995–96, and construction occurred in 1996–97. Project Amazon is an aluminum cat-ketch with two carbon fiber, free-standing, rotating wingmasts, an aluminum asymmetrical swinging keel, and twin carbon fiber, daggerboard-style rudders. Followers of the Around Alone and Vendée Globe single-handed, around-the-world races and developments of Open Class 60 sailboats may find these features unusual because collectively they do not fit mainstream racing sailboat design. None of Project Amazon's design features is totally new to sailboat naval architecture. These ideas have all been tried before, and all have been successful. But this is probably the first time that so many innovations have been combined into a single major racing sailboat design.