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Time and time again we see claims that sailors prefer the bermudan sloop because of conservatism. However, we also know what classes are the most popular ones, and they show the opposite. Here's the list of the most popular international racing classes in order of current sales volume, with...

We had our Hobie 20 written off after the mast was broken in a capsize. We've replaced it with a Formula 18 and now have the Hobie 20 hull, beams, jib and main available for free, if anyone is interested in parts for a project boat. The Hobie 20 hulls are basically modified Tornado hulls. They...

I just noticed that in the world's biggest cat race, line honours went to a Formula 18, followed by a Tornado and then the first foilers. Conditions were very light, but I thought the foilers were supposed to be "the future?" Does this mean that "the future" is that we will go slower in light...

EDIT - I was going to take out the reference to the Quants in the thread title but the edit function doesn't seem to work. I was just looking up the results of the Bol d'Or and saw some interesting results. One of the Quant 30s did well, but two out of the three Quants in the race finished...

Over in another thread, it was suggested that we look at the trends in new sales of dinghies to assess the future of design. Well, here's the results from ISAF reports, showing the number of boats sold over the past five years. I;ve included cats and some yachts for context. The Bic and Hobie...

Okay, defining "growing" is problematic. But it's interesting to see a class that is going from 0 boats at national titles to 14 and getting some solid club-level growth in three continents. The class is the Hobie 14, the original surfcat. Reports from Australia, the USA and South Africa are...

Well, that's what Fox reckons anyway. After all the attempts to make Olympic sailing more accessible and exciting to viewers, it was interesting and depressing to see this piece; http://www.foxsports.com/olympics/story/you-might-need-to-be-a-genius-to-understand-olympic-sailing-081016...

I just came across a letter in the Mystic Seaport Museum's collection of Francis Herreshoff letters where he writes of a boat built around NY circa 1927 that was called an aquaplane. It had "planes at the surface of the water out each side and one one tack one of them gave artificial stability...

To avoid the Sydney-Hobart thread being diverted, I thought I'd make a new thread for this as requested. In the S-H thread, I said that "about one third of the canting keel 100' supermaxis had lost their keel." This was disputed and/or misrepresented. So let's count the 100' canting keel...