[1] Raised in Mantoloking, New Jersey, he frequently sailed in Barnegat Bay and developed an early interest making boats that could go faster.
[1] In 1960, he participated in the 5.5-meter class Olympic trials with the ship Complex III and teammates Ed O'Malley and Runnie Colie who was the captain.
[17] In 1970, his father told Sports Illustrated, "He was a good skipper, but basically, he always wanted to know why the boat was going fast or slow and what he could do to make her go faster.
"[1] During the summers while in college, Chance worked at towing tank or ship model basin the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.
[2][4] In the fall of 1960, he left college to apprentice as a draftsman with the boat designer C. Raymond Hunt and Fenwick Williams in Tilton, New Hampshire.
[4] While with Hood, Chance supervised the towing tank tests on the Nefertiti, a 12-meter yacht created for the 1962 America's Cup.
[2] In 1962, he opened Chance & Company in Oyster Bay, Long Island, above a Goodyear Tire Store, later moved to the third floor of his renovated whaling captain's house.
[1][19] His naval architectural firm designed craft in a wide range of sizes, from racing shells to America's Cup competitors.
[2] Next, he designed a 40-foot trimaran that had a hydraulically activated roller-furling/reefing gear, a rotating mast, and hulls made of epoxy resins, using unidirectional materials that were very advanced for that time.
[2] In 1964, the New York Yacht Club selected Chance to receive funds, organization, and testing through a new program "to ease the burden especially of young and promising designers".
[23][12][24] With access to Bich's fortune from Bic pens, Chance noted, "Economic limitations were imposed only by the cost-effectiveness studies that we made.
[24] Another of his innovations for the French was to make the test yacht smaller so that it could be operated by a crew of ten, instead of the usual eleven.
"[24] However, the Chancegger could only be used to test innovations; the rules of America's Cup say, "The competing yacht and its components must originate in the country making the challenge.
"[23][24] Although he was criticized by some for working for a foreign team, Chance had not yet designed a 12-meter ship and wanted "to use the experience to help him build an even better boat for the United States.
[1][24] He said, "My own attitude is that if the French had won America's Cup, the New York Yacht Club could only have blamed itself for not ordering a new boat from me.
"[10] In fact, Chance was hired by Bill Flicker, a member of the New York Yacht Club, as the lead designer to improve the Intrepid for the America's Cup trials.
[24] Chance spent four months in Hoboken, New Jersey; he tank tested 75 model hulls until he found "the winning design for Intrepid".
[25] Chance cut the weight of vital fitting by 65% by substituting beryllium on the top of the mast, boron graphite for the boom, and magnesium for the winches.
[26] To everyone's surprise, except maybe Chance, the redesigned Intrepid beat the Valiant, the "early favorite", in America's Cup trials in August 1970.
"[19] To perfect his design, he tested five-foot models in the tanks at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, for $1,200 a day, until he "had achieved a phenomenal hull".
In the mid-1980s, American yachtsman Dennis Conner asked Chance to be part of his design team for the Sail America Foundation of San Diego Yacht Club.
[2] Along with Bruce Nelson and David Pedrick, Chance brought three new designs to the team—the third, Stars & Stripes 87, won the 1987 America's Cup for the United States.
[29][12][30] Chance noted that pressure to win back the title for the United States was high; approximately 30 yachts were designed for the 1987 America's Cup with a combined cost of $100 million.
[30] President Ronald Reagan said, "The skill and determination of the Stars & Stripes team captured the imagination of the American people.
They demonstrated the traits that have long characterized this country at its best—optimism, dedication, teamwork, and an eagerness to master the most advanced technology and put it to good use.
[1][12] Headed by Chance, the American design team of Chance, Dave Hubbard, Duncan MacLane, John Marshall, Gino Morrelli, Bruce Nelson and Bernard Nivelt did not have enough time to create a monohull to match the challenger; instead they designed a catamaran, dubbed Stars & Stripes (US 1).
[34] Chance said, "The combination of leading dimensions, rig, and stability chosen cannot be attained without state-of-the-art Kevlar/carbon epoxy composite or Unidirectional S-glass sandwich layups, so the design concept has only recently become possible.
[30] Onboard computers displayed "time to start and lay lines, accurate to seconds; plots of wind data, allowing tacking in phase with the oscillatory winds ...; target speed numbers, approximate to conditions, at which the boat should be sailed; and semi-automated enemy range and bearing so that relative speed could be constantly gauged.
Art as personal expression is equally important ...for a small team can utilize state-of-the-art technology, complete at world levels, and make an artistic statement.
[8][38] The couple met during the Newport to Bermuda race in the spring of 1974 when Dena was a cook on the Equation, a yacht designed by Chance.