Chris 249's blog on dinghy performance just goes from strength to strength.
It brings in a lot of material from other nations where our information might be sketchy
Did you know Singaporeans probably developed the trapeze well before anyone else for their long and skinny sailing canoes.
Or that Rennjollen were consistently planing quite possibly before Uffa Fox.
Interviews with pivotal people and digs deep into historic archives.
It is hours of fascinating reading with more going up all the time ... and it will be an important book one day.
Here is an extracted table of contents.
Contents
Part 1 – history
1.1 – “The sliding keels that took advantage”: the dawn of the racing centreboarder
1.2 – “Truly as fast as the wind”: catboats and skimming dishes (minor update 30/9/2016)
1.3 – “A little too marvelous to be real” – the story of the Una boats
1.4 – The sandbaggers
1.5- The mysterious history of the sharpie (updated 24/8/16)
1.6 – The raincoat boat bed and the shoe-shine missionary – the story of the sailing canoes, the first high performance centreboarders
1.7 – “Skidding over the water” – enter the planing hull
1.8 – “We have written too many obituaries of its victims” – the end of the sandbagger
1.9 – “These little clippers” – from rowing boat to racing dinghy
1.10 – “All built and rigged the same” – the invention of the one design class
1.11 – “Racers in every sense of the word” – the Raters
1.12 – “In every respect a sport suited to our sex” – the women who changed small-boat sailing
1.13- The Seawanhaka Cup
1.14 – “A radical departure” – the scows
1.15 – Introducing the era of nationalism: dinghy sailing in the early 20th century
1.16 – “Fox hunting”; Uffa, Avenger and the planing dinghy
1.17 – Thunder, Lightning and the Tali Dogang: the classic racing dinghy and the trapeze.
1.18 – Classic boats through modern eyes.
1.19 – From Kings to bouncing cats – the British development classes
1.20 – the local classes
1.21- “A great rage for the type” – the first Australian centreboarders
1.22- Painted boats, varnished ships and yellow dogs – the ancestor of the skiffs part 1
1.23 – Australian dinghies – in draft
1.24 – “It would be difficult to improve upon them”- the high performance dinghies of the European lakes
1.25 – The sailing scientists of the Renjollen
1.28 – US dinghies – in draft
1.30 – Tuckups and Hikers – the vanished world of the Delaware dinghies
1.33 – The third phase of dinghy sailing – the new internationalism and the dinghy boom
“A diabolically ingenious machine” – the Finn
“This was considered revolutionary” – the Flying Dutchman and the trapeze
“We just wanted a nice little boat”; the story of the Laser
Laser lines – the shape that launched 200,000 ships
From fizzers to Forty Niner – the production skiff types emerge
1.50 – What we’re sailing today, 1.0
1.51 – What we’re sailing today, 2.0 – the USA
Part 2 – Design
2.1 – The numbers game
2.2 – Shapes in the liquid: the hull of today’s performance dinghy
Other posts
THE REAL STORY OF AMARYLLIS AND THE FIRST RACING CATAMARANS