Best Dinghy?

[gggGuest]

I'll put in a vote for the Cherub, which few outside of NZ, AUS and the UK will have heard of. Broke the mould - the first lightweight dinghy, and every modern lightweight class from skiffs to round the world racers has it in its ancestry. And has, for a 3 nation boat, a phenomenal list of graduates, with Russ Bowler, Julian Bethwaite and Iain Murray among former National or World Champions.

[FAST FRED]

To my mind the best dinghy ever built is the Grumman Aluminum 9 ft model.

It will row from two positions , or with two oarsmen , nice when the slop kicks up.

It will carry 5 not too fat folks with an outboard in a slop that would have the condum dink folks soaking wet.

They sail quite well with a rig that stows all inside the boat.

A few medium sized fenders will fit under the seat thwart making it unsinkable.

In the usual cruising dock raft up , where no one has a painter longer than 3 ft , the aluminum stands up well to the crunch , far better than the rubber condum boats , and without the spliting that cheap GRP dinks are famous for.

The GRUMMAN is a dink that does NOT die in sunshine as GRP does , that can be used as a LIFEBOAT for a couple , with the EZ ability to self rescue for a few days (maybe a hundred miles of sea) with almost zero maint.

Sound like a dink that should be aboard any boat that regularly cruises.

Works for me , but boy are they hard to locate!!

FAST FRED

[PowerTech]

Am i missing something here.I thout a dinghy was little boat you bring with you some how like tow or hoist up on your big boat to get to land from your moring.Or a little terd boat kids play with.I don't know any body that brings a laser or a hobie cat with them to get the news paper.I personaly allways wanted the small boston whaler I think it's like a 8 footer or 10 I don't know.That looks like a cool ,tough little boat.I'll get my son one In a few years.

[John ilett]

But this is the sailboat dept within the forum so I guess the thread starter means a dinghy with sails.

[mattotoole]

Originally Posted by FAST FRED

To my mind the best dinghy ever built is the Grumman Aluminum 9 ft model.

(snip)

FAST FRED

What do they look like? Do you have a picture? I'll keep an eye out...

[mattotoole]

Originally Posted by Karsten

The Laser hurts! The Contender was 20 years ahead of its time. Fast, a bit of a challenge to sail, extremely good in lots of wind and heavy seas, plenty of adrelanin and a good crowd at least in Europe. Try it and you will be converted.

I've sailed a Contender. They're fast and fun, and any trapeze boat is less torturous than a boat where you have to hike out. I'm sure my back problems were caused by spending so much of my youth drooped over the side of a Laser. But like I said, the best racing is often in slow boats. You can't whip off a stealth roll-tack in a trapeze boat like you can in a Laser. So tactically speaking, trapeze boats are a lot less interesting to race. As boats get faster, the racing becomes more of a drag race, or worse, a parade.

This may be just my American bias, though. There seems to be much more interest in high tech boats Down Under, while in the US the boat is almost immaterial. We sail whatever's on hand. Of course, this is why all the new designs come from OZ/NZ, and not the US.

[mattotoole]

Originally Posted by gggGuest

I'll put in a vote for the Cherub, which few outside of NZ, AUS and the UK will have heard of. Broke the mould - the first lightweight dinghy, and every modern lightweight class from skiffs to round the world racers has it in its ancestry. And has, for a 3 nation boat, a phenomenal list of graduates, with Russ Bowler, Julian Bethwaite and Iain Murray among former National or World Champions.

I love Cherubs. They're still more a tweaker's boat than a sailor's boat though. OTOH, this is Boat*Design*DotNet...

[mackid068]

By dinghy, I mean sailing dinghy (even TENDERS with a sail rig). If it has a sail and is a SMALL boat (under 18 ft), then for the purposes of this thread, it's a dinghy. (By the way, it has to be a OPEN boat (without a cabin OF ANY SORT, ASIDE FROM THAT EXPRESSLY FOR STORAGE).

[gggGuest]

Originally Posted by mattotoole

So tactically speaking, trapeze boats are a lot less interesting to race. .

Different, but no less interesting. Because you can't just snap off a roll tack to get yourself out of a situation you have to put an awful lot more thought and preparion into not getting into it.And downwind tactics in gybing dpownwind boats are immeasurably more intersting than the all pile on top of the previous boat thing you get into straight downwind boats.

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by gggGuest

Different, but no less interesting. Because you can't just snap off a roll tack to get yourself out of a situation you have to put an awful lot more thought and preparion into not getting into it.And downwind tactics in gybing dpownwind boats are immeasurably more intersting than the all pile on top of the previous boat thing you get into straight downwind boats.

It's an old argument, but I'll put a vote in for the fast-tacking boats. Did 5 races this weekend, three on a craft that will out-tack a Laser and runs square much of the time, and two on a 16' high performance cat that tacks downwind. Last week I raced the Laser and the cat.

The fast-tacking boats allow you work every tiny shift tactically; you can come in, lee-bow someone out of the shift, work the individual shift (30' across) and then come out low and fast and get back into a controlling position against the guy you're playing with, then tuck him away, tack again, start rolling over to play with the next guy...all within 50 metres. Downwind, it's the same small-scale work.

I race many of the same guys in another class that goes faster, tacks slower and gybes downwind and the unanimous verdict (from the bronze medallist down) is that it is less tactical.

On the cat, it's normally two to four tacks, and that's when we're winning half our races against last year's national Tornado champ and a former A Class worlds runner-up. Just come out, choose a side, blast out, tack back. That's what the world Tornado, A Class and F18 champs do most of the time whenever we race them. There are simply fewer decisions to make. On a fast-tacking boat you ahve to choose the right side AND work every shift correctly out to that side and back again. Sure, tacking downhill is interesting but IMHO you don't gain as many tactics as you lose.

Plus, the slow boat normally has much larger fleets.....even more decisions. You can't just roll tack away in a Laser all that often in a good fleet, if you stuff up a situation you've lost too many boats. My own collection goes from the thing that tacks faster than a Laser (or just about) to something that tacks much slower than the International Canoe, and there's little doubt from what I see sailing them that the fast tacking medium speed craft are more tactical.

Steve Clark, Chris Nicholson, Julian Bethwaite, Elvstrom IIRC and others say that fast-tacking medium pace boats are the most tactical ones; I'll stick with them.

[CT 249]

Outstanding dinghies, historically;

Z Class Renjollen, like Manfred Curry's Aero; faster than a 505 in the '20s/'30s. Fully battened roachy rigs, low windage hulls, bendy gaffs, great boats.

R Class from New Zealand (12'9" 2 man). At times, the world's most advanced dinghy. The R boys had hulls weighing 45kg (IIRC), no transoms, fully battened high-aspect rigs and long poles in the '50s or early '60s. By '74, they were twin trapping from alloy wings, just like the "revolutionary" skiff types 20 years later.

Gwen 12 and Cherub. Lightweight planing trapeze powered types, designed '43 and '51 respectively IIRC. The Gwen showed the skiffs how much improvement they needed.

Darkie - Australian 14 of about '57. Wings, lightweight hull, small efficient rig. Boats developed from Darkie were winning the "Open 14 worlds" ahead of the Int. 14s as late as the '80s.

505.

FD.

Hornet; her performance in the ISAF trials that selected the FD as the new international class showed the huge value of a hiking plank or trap. At the start of the first trials she was the only boat with a trap or plank. Next year at the next trials, almost every boat had a plank or trap.

Moth. Fully battened roachy pocket-luff "fathead" sails in the '60s. Foilers. Narrow skiffs. Low-rocker Magnum types.

Snipe.

Laser.

Oppie.

49er.

International Canoe. Hollow masts, 45kg (IIRC) hulls, hiking planks, efficient fully battened rigs, all by 1886.

"March Hare" National 12. First boat with modern U sectioned hull AFAIK.

18' skiff "Bradmill". The wildest of them all. 18' LOA, mast about 43', 31' span from wingtip to wingtip.

The Prime two-man 18s.

NS14s

Int 14s. Not as important as they'd like to think, but very important.


Greatest miss - Elvstrom's Trapez. The boat that had everything; promotion, support, brilliant conception, good performance...everything but a decent hull! If it had a decent hull maybe most of us would be sailing one of the variants.

The "best" dinghy is impossible to pick out....best in speed? Best in positive impact in sailing? Best in design advancement? Best in enjoyment for the average sailor, or for the expert?

After a lot of talking to many of the top designers, IMHO perhaps the most respected boat of all is the 505.

[Skippy]

For anyone interested in Lasers or dinghy sailing, Olympic Laser sailor Michael Blackburn is currently underway crossing 140 nautical miles across Bass Strait south of Australia. There's info on his progress here.

[mackid068]

Good luck to him!

Though I still think the Moth Class and in particular the foiler Moth is one of the greatest dinghies of all time I've got to also mention the Windmill.
Designed by Clark Mills,designer of the Opti it was popular around Pensacola ,Fl. where I grew up. I raced it for a few years and thoroughly enjoyed the boat-would beat larger boats with impunity and planed upwind. Great fun!
I always wanted to turbo it up with a couple of trapezes, a lot more SA and a spin but never did ....

[yokebutt]

Think you'll have to qualify your question a little better to get meaningful answers.

That said, Optimist, for getting a lot of kids into sailing, in spite of being a bit of a turd.

Laser, for getting a lot of kids into fairly exciting, high-performance, competitive sailing, in spite of getting soft and uncompetitive too quickly.

29er, for being the next step up.

I14, 49er, 18 footer et al, for giving kids something to aspire to.

But, what the hell do I know.

Yokebutt.