Wendell H. (Skip) Calkins was educated at MIT where he took a course in Naval Architecture taught by the George W. Owen. After graduation he went to work at the Bath Iron Works in Maine. During the war Calkins worked at Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Drydock Corporation. After the war, he started his own yacht brokerage and repair facility for a while but soon went back to shipbuilding for National Steel & Shipbuilding in San Diego. All the while, Calkins did a lot of sailing in west coast distance racing circuit and had been developing his own ideas about the ideal custom offshore yacht. A friend asked him to put the design on paper and the result was a 50' light displacement, fin keeled yacht called 'Legend', the predecessor of the CALKINS 50, which was the Transpac race winner in 1957.
A profile of Calkins appeared in an issue of 'Sports Illustrated' magazine, March 4th, 1963.