Sailing World Magazine’s annual Boat of the Year tests are conducted in Annapolis, Maryland, following the US Sailboat Show. With independent judges exhaustively inspecting the boats on land and putting them through their paces on the water, this year’s fleet of new performance-sailing boats spanned from small dinghies to high-tech bluewater catamarans. Here’s the best of the best from our 2023 Boat of the Year nominees »

The High-Pressure Ripper

• Tiwal 3R 2023 Best Dinghy
• Stated purpose: Recreational sailing, one-design and rally racing
• Crew: One to two
• Praise for: Performance, comfort, portability
• Est. price as sailed: $8,900

The surest way to grow sailing is to make it easy to get on the water with minimal hassle on a boat that is exhilarating to sail—and that’s exactly what the inflatable and ­powered-up Tiwal 3R does. Thousands of Tiwal fanatics around the world can’t be wrong; they love their zippy little crafts, and the Tiwal community has grown ever larger since its young French innovators launched the first model a decade ago. The Tiwal 3R is the continuing evolution of a great idea—with even better execution. Tiwal boats keep getting better, and this one is its best yet.

The “R” is for Race, and that’s because after two years of playing and adventure racing on the early-edition Tiwal 3s, keener owners started asking for more. But the engineering required to make Tiwal’s high-pressure inflatable hull and aluminum frame take on greater rig and structural loads that had them stumped for nearly two years, says Emmanuel Bertrand. They kept breaking it until they got it right.

At 10 feet and 121 pounds fully rigged, the magic of the Tiwal 3R is its portability, which would explain why the company says it sells so many in urban areas around the world. The sail, hull, blades, five-part composite spar and boom, and aluminum frame pack into two 5-foot duffel bags. To put it all together at whatever water’s edge takes about 30 minutes; it’s mere minutes if the boat is coming off the car top already pumped and assembled.

The PVC hull construction is identical to all other Tiwals, but the design for the 3R is a big improvement, with a more pronounced V-shape, a bit more rocker, and a reinforcement plate on the bottom near the transom, which gives it stiffness and a cleaner exit. “It’s difficult to get a hard corner on inflatables,” Stewart says, “so that’s a great solution to give it a nice sharp edge and a cleaner break so the water isn’t bubbling up over the back.”

When I got my weight in the right spot, the boat just took off. It’s quicker than quick.

—Chuck Allen

The gust-responsive rig and big sail, built with North Sails racing cloth, is what takes the boat a big step from the recreational sailor’s Tiwal 3 to the racing sailor’s 3R, Powlison says. “This is the same size sail as a Laser, 77 square feet, which is a lot of power. When you get the vang set right, it does make a big difference. It is an effective control that they got right.”

Powlison’s only desire was to be able to get the sail controls to run farther back on the rack, accepting, however, that this would unnecessarily complicate the setup.

Allen, who’s been a Tiwal fan since the original, is impressed once again. “You definitely get a lot more performance out of this thing,” he says after sailing the boat in 10 to 15 knots and flat water. “I got hit with a puff and was like, dang! This thing’s got some wheels. It’s much faster and stiffer. I’m 170 pounds and was able to stay out on the rack the entire time, even when it got light.”

Stewart’s assessment of the 3R is that it’s built for a slightly more advanced sailor. “This thing is higher tech, with a lot more control lines, so it’s a bit more boat to handle. That being said, I’m a big guy (the manufacturer’s stated maximum load on the wing is 242 pounds), and I was never sitting in water, so it will accommodate a wide range of people.”

Getting the purchase systems for the 4-to-1 cunningham and the two-part vang (all of which are doubled-ended) into the mast collar hardware was an engineering exercise, says creator Marion Excoffon. But the end result is a system of color-coded lines and color-matched Harken blocks that work effectively and smoothly to depower the sail. Once the control systems are assembled, they don’t need to be rerun. When rigging, simply slide the mast into the collar, hook up the mainsheet, attach the rudder, and cast off for a fast and sporty adventure.

“Every time I got a little puff, the boat zipped right along,” Allen says. “The foils are stiff and shaped well, so the boat goes upwind really nicely. The bow was stiff and wasn’t flopping in the chop. But the best part was reaching around in the big puffs, sitting at the back corner of the rack, with the boat just skimming. When I got my weight in the right spot, the boat just took off. It’s quicker than quick.”

The post 2023 Boat of the Year Best Dinghy: Tiwal 3R appeared first on Sailing World.

“What’s in the bag?” you might ask entrepreneur and industrial designer Marion Excoffon as she opens the trunk of her car, revealing her cargo of two large duffle bags. To which she would respond with her sharp French accent: “That is the Tiwal 3R…grab a bag…let’s go sailing.” And then roughly 30 minutes later, the cleverly designed inflatable sailing dinghy will be pressurized, rigged and put to sea for a fast and splashy sail. It’s this ease and sailing experience from start to finish that’s fueling an international Tiwal sailing boom. And yes, they’re now racing them, too.

The Tiwal 3R, the following act to the Tiwal 2, recipient of Sailing World’s 2020 Boat of the Year (Best Dinghy) takes Excoffon’s and Tiwal’s innovation to the next level of performance as a “supercharged inflatable sport dinghy” aimed at the recreational racing market.

“It took over two years to develop this boat,” Excoffon says. “The timescale can be explained by the enthusiasm of the testers, which made us more and more ambitious. But the constraints and forces induced by the power of the new rig have obliged us to modify the structure and hull quite significantly, as well as the blades.”

The Tiwal 3R’s inflatable hull gets its rigidity from the advanced PVC laminate and construction (similar to inflatable SUPs) and its aluminum exoskeleton that can be assembled d easily by one person. With all that air and the composite daggerboard and rudder blades, the boat weighs in at 121 pounds. The stated maximum load (i.e., combined crew weight) is 440 pounds, so with plenty of room on the flat and flared hull (and the the hiking racks), it can easily accommodate two crew. Think family racing here.

North Sails developed the rig and sail combo to deliver a responsive and properly designed 77-square-foot laminate mainsail. The sectional mast and boom tubes are carbon composite, contributing to the sail’s gust efficiency and overall light weight of the rig package. Sail controls are split to each side of the boat, allowing the keen racer to make adjustments on the fly and get every ounce of speed from the boat straight from the hiking rack. And while on the subject of speed: during our Boat of the Year tests in 2019, the recreationally de-tuned Tiwal 2 was a buoyant planing machine in 25 knots, so we expect the expect the same of the 3R—and then some—when testing gets underway in Annapolis in October.

Tiwal 3R Specs:

Length: 10’6’’
Beam: 5’4’’
Sail: 77 sq. ft.
Weight: 121 pounds
Price:  $8,800 base boat

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At the first weather mark of the final race of the 2021 ILYA Senior Fleet X Boat Championship on Pewaukee Lake, Wisconsin, hometown heroes Kamron Kaiser and Peter Goggins round somewhere in the midteens. They’re second overall in the standings, but regatta leader Henry Ackley, of Pine Lake, is having a shocker.

“Can you see him?” Kaiser asks his crew after the whisker pole is set.

“Not sure,” Goggins says. “Wait, there he is. He’s still going upwind.”

Halfway down the run, it’s clear Ackley is racing his throw-out, which means Goggins and Kaiser need to finish in the top four to win the regatta. With 47 boats clogging the Senior Fleet racecourse, and another 64 in Junior Fleet, Pewaukee Lake is a mess of mains and jibs, but for Kaiser and Goggins, the path to victory is clear.

“One boat at a time,” Kaiser says. “One boat at a time.”

Before the leeward mark, they rein in two boats. On the next beat, they navigate a light and fluky Pewaukee breeze, which at times feels more like playing checkers than sailboat racing. As they sail from puff to puff, they manage to leapfrog another clump of six boats. On the final downwind leg, they notice a bit of texture coming off the northern shoreline.

“See that?” Kaiser says. “It’s going to go right.”

Goggins agrees, and after reeling in two more boats, they round the gate ­seventh—a ­minute behind the fourth-place boat, which, along with the rest of the leading pack, sails blindly toward the left side of the course. But Kaiser and Goggins stick to their plan and dig into the right. Sure enough, the breeze fills in from the dock-cluttered shoreline, giving the duo a glory shift toward the top of the beat. Along the edges of the racecourse, families and friends watch with bated breath. In this part of the world, sailboat racing is a spectator sport, and as Kaiser and Goggins pass the committee to finish fourth—good enough to win the regatta—the spectator fleet erupts into a cacophony of horns and whoops.

“Way to go boys!”

“Nice job!”

“What a way to end it!”

Though the regatta comes down to the wire, 15-year-old Kaiser isn’t new to high-stakes moments. The year before, he won it all in the Junior Fleet, and coming into this event, Kaiser and Goggins, 11, had bagged two other X boat championships. But everyone knows the Class X Championship trophy, which has been raced for since 1940, is the most ­coveted prize of the season.

The X boat isn’t the flashiest youth race boat. At 470 pounds, it weighs about two and a half times more than a Club 420. The hull is wide with a rigid chine that gives it the look of a miniature Lightning. Downwind, a whisker pole is used to project the jib instead of hoisting a spinnaker, making for some less-than-thrilling runs, but what the X boat lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in simplicity.

Because it is slow to heel, learning the basics of steering, sail trim and weight placement become simple enough for a youth sailor to grasp. Most X boaters start crewing around age 10 to supplement their Optimist racing, which can be socially isolating. The X boat gives them an opportunity to enjoy the sport with another person, and because the ideal crew weight is so low, older skippers typically race with younger crewmembers, creating a mentorship unique to the class. This skipper-crew ­relationship can even be viewed as a sacred bond, with many duos remaining lifetime friends.

Cousins Jimmy Hughes and John Kotovic, from Minnetonka YC, are a prime example. This pair won the 64-boat Junior Fleet, which, with a younger crop of sailors, typically ­features similar-age teams.

“The X boat has been so much fun,” says 14-year-old Hughes. “I’ve sailed a couple Inlands with my dad on the A scow. They’ve won a couple times, which really helped me understand how a team has to come together to win.”

Unlike most X boat ­skippers, Hughes was forced to bypass the crewing phase of the progression. His victory at the Junior Inland marks a dramatic turnaround for the Lake Minnetonka X boat fleet, which was recently all but extinct. A dedicated group of parents brought the class back from the brink, and now, at nearly 20 club racers, it boasts one of the healthiest fleets in the Inland.

“I live about 20 seconds from Jimmy,” says 13-year-old Kotovic. “So, it’s easy for us to get out on the water. I’ve sailed a lot with my dad on the E boat, and he has taught me so much about how to be a good crew.”

Kotovic’s father, Rick, grew up sailing at Pine Lake and graduated into E scow racing on Pewaukee Lake. In 2002, he met his future wife, Nancy, at the ILYA Championships at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The Inland Lake Yachting Association has been fostering these types of relationships since its founding in 1897. For adult racers, the summer annual has provided ground for scow racing for more than 120 years. Today, the various ILYA championship regattas host some of the most competitive one-design racing in the country. Big fleets, big courses and big wind shifts are hallmarks of these annual affairs, and most importantly, there is something for everyone to enjoy. One of the most difficult aspects of the sport of sailing is creating a progression for sailors to begin at a young age and continue racing into adulthood. With the Inland, there is always something for developing sailors.

Beginning in the Optimist, they can progress to the X boat, MC scow, C scow, E scow, and eventually the 38-foot A scow. With the recent addition of the Melges 15, the gap between the X boat and the more high-octane E scow is bridged, which should see even more youth development in these traditionally adult-­oriented one-design classes. “My mom and my sister race the Melges 15,” Hughes says. “Those are really fast compared to the X boat. The downwinds are so much fun.”

Racing in the Midwest isn’t just about getting to play with flashy new toys, however. It’s about family, friendships, and an overall sense of regional community that keeps sailors young and old returning. This is where the X boat truly shines. Every ILYA lake boat has a designated letter displayed at the top of its mainsails: M for Minnetonka, V for Pewaukee, I for Geneva. The X boat is the first class in which sailors get to display their letters proudly. Many of them will continue to use the same sail numbers into adulthood, giving them a unique sense of personal identity. X boat sailors don’t only learn the basics of championship racing, they learn how to ­operate inside an intergenerational community of sailors.

“My parents met sailing X boats,” Kaiser says. “My mom sailed on Pewaukee, and my dad sailed on Beaver. My grandparents also met that way. My grandma raced X boats and then MCs, and my grandpa raced X boats and then Cs.”

Like those before him, Kaiser is already stepping into bigger and faster boats. “I’ve been racing on the E and the MC,” he says. “I just started skippering a Melges 17 too. There’s something to race almost every night on Pewaukee Lake, so it’s been fun to check out other boats.”

And then there’s the silver. As competitors and parents gather around the flagpole on the lawn of the Pewaukee YC for the awards ceremony, nearly two dozen perpetual trophies line a long white tablecloth with the words “Inland Lake Yachting Association: 1897”inscribed in red lettering. This annual ritual has been repeated since 1940, and by now, X boat sailors are competing for the same hardware their parents and grandparents once did. In 1968, the X fleet had become so large that regatta organizers decided to split it into Junior and Senior divisions. Kaiser will be the ninth sailor to have his name inscribed on both Junior and Senior trophies, and if he continues his current trajectory, this won’t be the last time he gives a speech in front of this crowd.

Though these silver trophies serve as official record, the true legacy of ILYA X boat racing lives on in the memories of those who have sailed them: the countless mornings going down to the dock and rigging up with a sibling or neighbor, the painful moments in the parking lot learning how to trailer a boat for the first time from an overwhelmed parent or coach, road trips through the American heartland watching rows and rows of cornfields blur by the window—all in anticipation of arriving at some small inland lake to rekindle friendships from the summer before. Most kids who sail X boats never win a regatta, but a competitive round of volleyball or one good shift on the racecourse is enough to keep them coming back for more. All these memories, from the barbecues to the racing, are something they will share with their kids one day, and so the progression continues.

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When Scott Harestad describes sailing MC Scows, his eyes light up with the expectation of a kid on Christmas morning. You can almost feel the exuberance. “The acceleration in the puffs is just amazing!” he says gesturing outward, his face slightly reddening with excitement and eyes widening like he’s suddenly been transported onto a wild reach on some distant lake. His speech quickens, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “And,” quickly catching a breath, “you’re constantly working the controls—cunningham, vang and mainsheet—to keep it there.” Then he’s suddenly on dry land again and just as quickly asks, “Have you sailed one?”

I have, so he pivots to Jen Edney, our photographer, who is standing nearby.

“How about you? Ever sail an MC?”

And before Edney has a chance to finish saying she hasn’t, he’s at work, trying to set up a time and place to make it happen.

Harestad is no fly-by-night MC Scow proselytizer. He’s earned his stripes through 40 years of participation and is on his fourth boat. From Spring Lake, Michigan, Harestad travels a lot, living by the adage “you go to their regatta and they’ll come to yours.” And as current class president, he’s eager to tick off the latest class success stories to anyone who will listen. Recently, he notes, they have five active sailmakers and a New Jersey fleet that’s blossomed from five boats to 30 in a year and a half. And now, at the class’s 50th Anniversary National Championship held at Clear Lake, Iowa, where there’s 119 boats, is a class record.

Anniversary regattas are nothing new in the one-design ­sailing landscape, but only a few draw such big fleets. When that happens, it’s not just a testament to longevity, but also a ­barometer of the class’s future. The MC has come a long way from its first national championship, held in early October 1971 in Shreveport, Louisiana. That event—won by hull No. 10—drew a dozen sailors, all with wide-eyed optimism about the future of this new Melges-designed scow. Andy Burdick is the president of Melges Performance Sailboats and holder of a Tom Brady-like record of 12 MC national titles. He says: “It wasn’t until the 1980s and ‘90s that production numbers started to get really big—over 100 MCs a year. Lately, it’s averaged around 50 a year.”

Still, that’s a number most classes can only envy.

Part of the MC’s success lies with the Melges traveling road show, where a trailer would be loaded up at the factory in Zenda, Wisconsin, and the driver would be given marching orders not to come back until the trailer was empty. It worked. There are now more than 2,800 MCs, with 662 of them holding class ­memberships—up from 574 in 2020.

As another indicator of the class’s well-being, if you want a new boat, the going wait is three months. And good used boats are rare as hens’ teeth. In fact, at the championship’s Saturday-night annual meeting, Harestad pushed the idea that everyone should buy new boats so the market would get an injection of affordable used boats. The demand is certainly there, and the boats hold their value, so why not? Dan Allen from Clear Lake, who has a new boat on order, sold his boat right after the regatta for just a few hundred dollars less than he bought it for six years ago.

Designed as a scaled-down, simplified version of the C Scow, the MC (the “M” is for Melges) is basic: a three-stayed rig and only five sail controls—mainsheet, traveler, cunningham, outhaul and vang. It’s easy to transport on a small trailer and simple to rig. It’s the least expensive of the Melges scows and, because it’s not sailed flat, is easier to hike on than most dinghies. Consequently, the class continues to draw a lot of master sailors. Witness the 2020 Masters National Championship, which drew 109 boats, also held at Clear Lake.

The class, however, is doing well at attracting racers from the opposite end of the age spectrum. “Some of the kids coming out of the junior program seem to feel that this is an old person’s boat,” says Dan Quiram from Pewaukee Lake, “but then they try a C Scow, which takes a lot of strength, and quickly realize this is a great boat for them.”

More than a half-dozen youth skippers are sprinkled into the 50th anniversary fleet.

Conceived as a singlehander, MC sailors regularly bring a crew aboard, especially when the wind is above 10 knots. In fact, unless you’re well over 200 pounds, you probably need to have a crew to be competitive when the wind’s up. The ideal total weight in a breeze is 210 to 380, which means it works well for a lot of husband-wife and parent-child teams.

The crew option has also been a great promotional tool. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taken people with me on the MC who’ve never sailed before because all they really have to do is switch sides when we tack or jibe,” Burdick says. “They can get involved as much as they like with the sail controls and boards. I’ve seen a lot of people get into the sport just because they’ve gone for that ride.”

One case in point is Annie Samis, a 14-year-old junior sailor from Chicago, whose background includes Optis and Lasers. Never having sailed an MC, she was convinced to put her name on the 2021 Nationals crew list and was paired with Richard Blake, from the Hoover Sailing Club in Ohio. She got a chance to first sail with him in the practice race, but it didn’t take her long to get hooked.

“It’s so much fun!” she gushes with the enthusiasm of a high-school cheerleader. Samis and Blake already have plans to sail in a future Nationals as well as at the Hoover SC. As a bonus, her name was drawn in the raffle at the Saturday-night party that produced five winners of new sails, one from each of the class’s sailmakers—not a bad way to enter the class. The five sailmakers donated the sails, and raffle proceeds went to Clear Lake Youth Sailing.

Although the controls are basic, the MC is a bit like a saxophone—easy to play, but difficult to play really well. Excellence can sometimes take years. Maybe that’s why some of the best in the fleet are those who’ve been at it the longest—those in the masters, grand masters and mega masters groups. Almost 70 percent of the 2021 Nationals fleet were masters.

Quiram started racing MCs when he was 21, and at the time, he says, he thought to himself, “‘I hate those old masters bastards!’ Then I became a master, and I said, ‘I hate those old grand masters bastards!’ And now I’m an old grand master.”

There are also idiosyncrasies unique to scows. Former Finn sailor Andy Casy from Oklahoma says: “It’s challenging because you have a leeboard going out at one angle and the mast at another angle, and you have to get the right dynamics going to make it all work. You can have two boats in the same wind, and one will be 15 degrees higher than the other, just because that boat has ­everything working right.”

Matt Fisher points to the challenge of a blunt bow and big ­mainsail. “It can be a tough boat to sail downwind in a big breeze, as it’s easy to submarine the bow,” he says. “You have to go more by the lee than you’d think and really work to steer around the waves.”

Still, as Dan Wilson from Indianapolis points out, there’s a wide range of abilities at regattas. “No matter where you are,” he says, “you can find a group to race against at your level.”

The MC has one builder, Melges, which has been the case since the beginning, except for a period in the 1980s and ‘90s when Johnson Boatworks began building them, but it went out of business in 1998. Having one builder has added stability to the class, something highly valued in most one-designs.

There have been subtle changes over the years, such as the ­addition of a mast-base pivot plate, which allows one person to raise the mast instead of two. And from around 2010 through 2017, Melges produced a sealed-cockpit version, in part to minimize the amount of water in the boat when capsized. The builder then went back to the open-cockpit layout but removed the aft deck, which, among other things, made it easier to roll and store the sail. “Melges has been good at responding to what we want,” Harestad says, “and that’s been a real plus.”

Admit it or not, there’s more to a regatta than just the racing. Iowa’s Clear Lake YC proved this over a three-day national championship that was never completed, thanks to a rotation of no wind, rain, severe winds and thunderstorms. On this particular weekend, sailboat racing throughout the Midwest encountered similar conditions. Up north, A Scows were skunked on the first day of their US Nationals on Wisconsin’s Pewaukee Lake, eventually getting in four races over the next two days, and Chicago fleets racing on Lake Michigan reported tornadoes. For the purely race-centric, the apocalypse was surely at hand.

But from a broader perspective, the MC Scow 50th Anniversary event demonstrated resiliency to uncooperative weather and the ability to still chalk up a win of sorts, presenting a model for how to do a lot with just a little. While the weather allowed completion of just one race (the class minimum is three for a championship), the emphasis Clear Lake YC had placed on the nonracing side was the regatta equivalent of a winning lotto ticket.

Understand that this is no large yacht club, neither in numbers nor size—the 150 members occupy a small building on the site of a former Jaycee’s bathhouse at the base of Main Street. The building blends in well with the lakefront, evoking a late 19th or early 20th century railroad station, complete with wide roof overhangs around the perimeter. Founded in 1935 by “Cookie” Cook and a few others, it’s on public property, which makes it accessible for junior sailing lessons. There’s one ramp and a single dock with three fingers. Membership is $170 a year. Juniors are free. That the club’s volunteers pulled off the logistics of managing 105 visiting boats plus the home boats is nothing short of remarkable. Certainly, there was a ton of work, but they take it all with a dose of Midwestern modesty.

“We started organizing this right after the masters championship here last September,” says Stu Oltrogge, the event’s co-chair, “so we had the highway basically already built.”

Oltrogge’s wife, Judy, recruited 55 volunteers to handle the onshore activities—meals, registration, etc.—while another 25 took care of launching, haul-out and spectator boats. That’s a ­considerable volunteer corps given the size of the membership.

Clear Lake is just over 5 miles long, and the racing area at the south end of the lake is 2 miles in diameter, with an average water depth of 12 feet. It’s unique in that the water level is 100 feet higher than the surrounding area, which, in normal times, should increase the chances of good winds. Apart from sailing, Clear Lake is most known for the Surf Ballroom, where, in 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper last performed before their plane crashed a few miles outside of town. While those musicians put Clear Lake on the map, it’s a vibrant, iconic Midwestern town with lots of activities every week, ranging from concerts at the lakeside band shell, to boat tours on a stern-wheeler, to farmers markets on Main Street.

There was also an intentional effort by Clear Lake YC to keep this event “small town.” “We decided we wanted to put groups of folks all around the lake,” says Mark Tesar, Oltrogge’s co-chair counterpart, “having them stay with host families or at an Airbnb.” Such a move was in part a muted response to lingering pandemic concerns, but also just a large dose of Iowan hospitality. The result was a handful of encampments of sorts. For instance, 13 Michigan sailors stayed at the unique “Pyramid House” along the lake’s north shore, a crew that included three national champions.

And then there was “the Compound,” where I was lucky enough to land a spot. I’m not sure whether it was a group of three houses based around three docks full of scows or whether it was three docks full of scows based around three houses. Either way, Mark Tesar, his brother Todd, and Mr. and Mrs. Oltrogge opened up their homes to MC sailors and made it available as a base for other boats. With plenty of food, beverages and shade on the porches, it would be tough to find a nicer place to hang out when the wind doesn’t materialize. With 17 MC Scows in front of their houses, there were more one-designs than you might see in front of a lot of YCs.

With visiting as well as local boats in the water and on vacant hoists along their docks, one could be sailing in less than 10 minutes and efficiently to the race area. Even better, with the racing area so close at hand, box lunches were available each morning at Clear Lake YC for people to take to their lodgings, and the plan was to sail a couple of races in the morning, come in for lunch, then sail an afternoon race. It was all very civilized.

Each private home, like most along any inland lake, has the requisite lakeside deck ringed with chairs and chaise-style lounges, with coolers readily at hand, and those became the hangouts during nonracing times, which meant they got a lot of use at this year’s event.

No doubt, the MC 50th Nationals will go down in class history as the regatta that wasn’t. Yet it was an opportunity for those who hadn’t seen each other since pre-pandemic days to reconnect—a reunion of sorts. So, it certainly was a regatta for the sailors looking to visit after a year of COVID-19 social denial. For Todd Tesar, it all felt normal. “We usually travel to a lot of the lakes around here and see the same guys all the time,” he says. “We stay at their homes; they stay at ours; we go to their weddings.”

Cam McNeil, who decisively won the event’s one and only race, says, “Despite the lack of races, it was still great to see old friends and meet new people.”

And that really is what this particular national championship is all about—gathering with friends, in honor of a beloved boat that loves you back.

The post In Good Company with the MC Scow appeared first on Sailing World.

If one were strolling the shoreline of Bristol, Rhode Island, in late 2020, one might have admired a small craft gliding across Narragansett Bay. Low to water and swift, it was a dinghy for sure. But what the heck was it?

A triangular lateen-looking sail with thick red, white and blue stripes might lead one to believe it to be a Sunfish. Or even a Sailfish. Nope. It was the new Fulcrum Speedworks Rocket prototype. It may have looked old school from afar, but as the saying goes, looks can be deceiving.

The prototype launched that day by Dave Clark, the young entrepreneur and boatbuilder responsible for the pint-sized UFO foiling catamaran, has plenty of back story, and we’ll get to that shortly, but first, we must face the big colorful elephant in the room. Yes, that would be the Sunfish, the most iconic recreational centerboard dinghy of all time.

The Rocket is kind of like a Sunfish, but is not a Sunfish. It is a Sunfish that has been modified in very targeted and specific ways to make it perform better while maintaining simplicity and low cost. Steve Clark, David’s father and co-developer, says this is the combination of attributes sailors and small-craft dealers across the United States are seeking today. If anyone would know, it would be Steve, past president of Vanguard Sailboats, once the dominant builder of one-design dinghies in the States—including the Sunfish. According to both father and son, the Sunfish’s builder, LaserPerformance, has not met this demand and there is an opportunity to deliver “an alternate fundamental product in the marketplace.”

“With the UFO, we already have a very technologically advanced and different product,” says Dave Clark. “It sells well to people who want tectonic change. We wanted to add a boat for those who the UFO doesn’t appeal to as much. The sailing market on this continent gets showered with ‘smarter’ boats time and time again, and for hundreds of thousands of board boat purchases, those people have passed.”

Why, Clark then posits, do so many sailors today still choose to buy iconic boats of the past— new, used, beaters and all? That’s easy: “Simplicity, safety, ease of use, cost.”

With a demand accelerated by a pandemic-induced rush on small boats, Clark’s company, Fulcrum Speedworks, had been looking for an opportunity to add something to its line. The opportunity presented itself when he came across a collection of small-boat tooling listed on craigslist. A score he identified in the pile of molds was the tools for the 14-foot Howmar Phantom. He and a buddy promptly rented a Penske truck and beelined to Bethel, Maine, where he forked over $1,800, dragged molds out of the barn and drove away with a bed full of fiberglass history and the start of his next venture.

“There’s always been a need for a new-model year of this thing,” says Clark who has an obvious fondness for what he says is “a uniquely potent example” of a good board-boat hull. “For those who don’t know the Howmar Phantom, it’s the second-most successful board boat ever introduced—after the Sunfish,” he says. “They sold about 1,000 of them per year for about a decade through the late 70s and early 80s.”

The elder Clark, a student and professor of high-performance sailing, says the Sunfish, Phantom and others of its ilk fall under the category of “board boat,” which he likens to the various scows preferred by American lake and flat-water sailors. “[Board boats and scows] are hard bilged with a bow whose primary entry angle is parallel to the water plane,” he says. “They could also be considered sharpies. In particular, V-bottom sharpies like Lightnings, Windmills and Snipes, but the low freeboard and beam-to-length ratio place them more in the scow genus. Board boats and scows both feature generous low-aspect-ratio sail plans. The result is a high sail area-to-displacement ratio and sail-area-to-wetted-surface ratio with a very low center of effort.”

Translation: they’re wickedly versatile boats across the wind range.

The Phantom was marketed as the recreational family sportsboat at the time, Clark says. During the 1970s, there were numerous attempts to capture a share of the board-boat market and take a slice out of Sunfish’s dominance. Builders littered the continent with cheap clones that were not as good; the Howmar Phantom was an exception. “It was not just a cheaper Sunfish but a slightly larger board boat that brought new performance and features to the party,” says Steve Clark. “I could design a new hull, and I flatter myself that it would be better than the Phantom hull, but we would have to go to some effort to prove that claim.”

So rather than start from scratch with an entirely new design, they simply improved upon the Phantom. “We saw the opportunity to salvage a storied and well-thought hull, and reconfigure it within its own legacy,” says Dave Clark. “This boat was destined to be constantly improved and renewed, so we are carrying on that journey into the 21st Century.”

How so? You have to see it to believe it, as I did on a recent raw winter’s night, meeting Dave Clark after dark at the family farm in Warren, Rhode Island. Inside a barn, alongside a half-restored wooden International 14 and an almost complete new International Canoe, the white-hulled Rocket prototype sat on its dolly, its sail and spars piled atop, ready to launch at any whim. The most noticeable feature is the deck layout—Clark did away with the Phantom’s crammed and enclosed cockpit and stretched it wide open from the centerboard trunk all the way to the transom. Through saving weight with a modern laminate and materials and ensuring it has durability (and yes, he smacked the deck forcefully to show me it could take a bit of blunt-force trauma), Clark says he now has a board boat that “will perform better and be a better family boat than before.” Better foils will certainly help, too.

In the process of 3D scanning the tooling, he says, they started to question a lot of the highly-improvable areas of the boat. Consequently, he butchered the old deck mold to get what he wanted: a more comfortable, more practical, and better-looking craft. The original Phantom eventually weighed upwards of 130 pounds (dry) so Clark set out to shave that down considerably, for the obvious reason that a proper beach boat better be easy to move around and put atop the family wagon.

“Make something light and strong and you’ve already done the best thing for it,” he says. Using a vacuumed-bagged vinylester resin and thermoplastic honeycomb core laminate, he has the hull weight reduced to a respectable 90 pounds.

Light. Strong. What else could he possibly do to redeliver a universal centerboard dinghy that a wide-range of sailors can relate to? That’s easy. He preserved the lateen rig (although, technically, Steve Clark points out, it’s a crab-claw sail), iconic and simple in its setup and trim: one mast, two lightweight spars linked with Spectra strops and a single halyard. “There were countless conversations about putting something more modern on it,” he says. “I can walk up to this thing and start it like a lawnmower. Pull the string, cleat it, and off we go. There’s not a simpler rigging system on the planet than a lateen mainsail. It’s a throwback but for a really good reason.”

Clark says the first hulls of the Fulcrum Rocket will be punched out in January 2021 and he’s already taking orders ($4,600 including North Sails Dacron sail and Fulcrum-made dolly). He’s forecasting a production run of several per week, so step right up, he says, because this Rocket launch is going to the stratosphere. And if, by chance, your goal is to go higher, ask him about the optional “Interceptor” upgrade…the one with the rudder elevators. Because good is never good enough.

The post Fulcrum’s Latest Rocket Launch appeared first on Sailing World.

“Ease, hike, trim.” Say what? This a ­common phrase that’s been around for a long time, and one that has always bothered me. I understand that the point of this age-old piece of advice is to keep the boat flat and humming along through gust, but taking it literally, it’s misleading. If the goal is to go fast, I think a rewording is in order to make the technique more accurate through a range of conditions. Hear me out.

It’s safe to assume that the phrase lays out a sequence of events meant to handle an upwind puff: 1) ease the sails; 2) hike the boat flat; 3) trim the sails back in. The specific condition this phrase refers to is hazy to me. By telling us to “hike,” is it implied that we are not yet hiking but on the edge? Close to hiking? Are we already hiking but not all the way yet? I’m not sure, but instead of worrying too much about that, let’s just go through the wind ranges and decide the best thing to do in a puff for each scenario.

Light Wind

I define light wind as ­conditions when you’re well below hull speed and your team is sitting inboard. In this condition, you keep the boat level by moving body weight in and out, and you are trimming to maintain flow over the sails. A puff comes along, and the proper response is to move your body weight to windward to keep the proper heel. Leeches on both sails will blow open a bit with the new pressure. You will need to trim them back in; but not too quickly—the timing is important. Your first response is to move your body weight gently to windward. Next, head up a bit as your apparent wind increases and shifts aft while trimming just enough to match your new steering angle. The order of events should be: 1) weight to windward; 2) trim in as you head up. The light-wind equivalent phrase to “ease, hike, trim” would be “weight up, point, trim.”

Medium Wind

In this wind range, you’re getting close to hull speed and your weight is to windward. You’re either sitting on the rail, or at a gentle hike. You’re watching your leech telltales on both sails to trim to optimal flow. The ­forward crew counts down, “puff in 3, 2, 1.”

At right around “1,” your team hikes (or hikes a little harder, if you already are) to keep the boat from heeling as the puff hits. The leeches will blow open, so you will have to trim in to keep optimal flow, and you will want to head up as the apparent wind moves aft. The order of events should be: 1) hike; 2) trim in as you head up. In other words: “hike, point, trim.”

Medium to Heavy-Air Transition

Here, you’re already hiked, and a puff will transition you to overpowered. This is a sweet condition to sail in—my favorite. A lot goes on to maximize your acceleration in this puff, so, “puff in 3, 2, 1, puff” sets a bunch of things in motion. At around “3″ or “2,” to get ahead of the curve, any significant depower controls come on, such as the backstay, if you have one. I have sailed on boats where the vang rams the boom into the mast, bending it, and in catamarans where an 8-to-1 cunningham compression bends the mast. Whatever the major depowering tool on your boat is, now is your time to use it. At about “1,” you’d better be hiking harder, or you are already too late. At the front edge of the puff, the leech will blow open, but unlike the lighter winds, this is good because it helps auto-depower, and you will likely need to ease more to balance the boat, depending on how big the puff is. As in lighter winds, you will head up, following the apparent wind’s aft shift, and you might even want to head up more to feather the sails.

The order of events goes like this:

1. Pull on depower controls
2. Hike full (if you are not already)
3. Ease (if necessary)
4. Head up and re-trim.

This one is a ­mouthful: “controls, hike, ease, point, trim.”

Overpowered Conditions

You’re hiking as hard as possible while feathering and playing the sheets to keep the boat flat. I don’t believe in changing how hard we hike by hiking extra hard in a puff because that is not sustainable. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so I would rather a steady 80 percent effort over a long day. Your primary depower tools are already at max, so that’s easy—just leave them where they are. With that, when a puff hits, there are only sheets and steering left to keep the boat flat. It’s always a combination of both, but the question is how much of each. The flatter the sea state, the more I feather to depower; the wavier it is, the more I ease the main to depower. Even when it’s flat and the priority is to steer, easing the mainsheet is the quickest way to spill power as the front edge of a puff hits, so most often, I ease on “2″ or “1″ of the puff countdown. The order here is: 1) ease; 2) head up and re-trim. In our phraseology, that would be: “ease, point, trim.”

Though it does not match the way I would respond to a puff in any of these conditions. I do think that the ol’ “ease, hike, trim” serves as an ­effective reminder of the importance to keep the boat flat, and for that I give it credit. There are two significant things that rub me wrong, however. The first is that if you’re easing and not hiked full, you are giving away precious leverage. I can think of no condition where it is better to ease before you hike. If you are ­overpowered, you should already be fully hiked, whether it’s 15 knots or 30 knots, so it does not work there either.

The second rub is that the phrase implies reaction instead of getting ahead of the puff. Ease before hike is what one would do if blindsided by a gust. Someone should be looking and calling that puff.

The closest condition I think “ease, hike, trim” refers to is in the medium-to-heavy transition condition. Clearly “controls, hike, ease, point, trim” doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it’s a far more accurate description of what’s best to do. Get used to saying it if you want to go fast.

The post The Fallacy of Ease, Hike, Trim appeared first on Sailing World.

“The Melges 15 appeals to a wide range of skill levels and sailors while serving a variety of purposes,” introduced Harry Melges, CEO of Melges. “The Melges 15 creates a clear pathway for junior sailors to get started and stay excited about sailing while also being comfortable and accessible enough for adults to learn, race, or cross-train.”

With the main design goals focused on stability and performance in a variety of conditions, the boat features a narrow overall beam and a flat cross-section shape for stability, righting moment, and ease of planing. For a more forgiving feel upwind and to navigate larger sea states, the Melges 15 has just the right amount of fore and aft rocker.

For adults, the Melges 15 features a more ergonomic platform and a broader weight range for competitive racing. Melges conducted extensive research and product testing to produce this layout factoring in cockpit depth, backbone height, and floor plan. The result is a comfortable environment for both the skipper and crew. The deeper cockpit takes the load off the sailor’s knees helping them feel locked into the boat while the high boom and gnav vang system work together to make the boat easier to maneuver.

The asymmetric spinnaker offers an additional performance element while the single-pull launch and retrieval system makes handling the sail easy and fast. “This system is nothing new to small boats,” explained Melges. “We envision this boat being sailed by kids, couples, and families. By adding this setup to the Melges 15, it keeps the boat fun and easy for anyone to crew.”

The Melges 15 has an adaptable sail plan for both club use and one-design racing. The club setup features a main and jib and durable platform for daily use in sailing programs. The one-design rig adds the asymmetric spinnaker for advanced learning and club racing. The transition from club to one-design setup is a simple process to remove the spinnaker bag and bowsprit.

The new boat is already creating such a buzz that Melges is planning a winter series in Florida for 2021. More details on the winter series will be released in the Fall. Production is underway in Zenda, Wisconsin, for the first run of boats. “As we celebrate 75 years of business, we’re proud to start building these boats at our Wisconsin headquarters,” said Melges. “We use the same build processes on the Melges 15 that we use for many of our other boats and hold them to the same high standards.”

The post Melges Doubles Down With a New Dinghy appeared first on Sailing World.

At A Glance

Price As Sailed: $4,800

Design Purpose: Freestyle sailing

Crew List: One or two

Allen and Stewart are like two oversize kids duking it out on the playground. Stewart, weighing in at a smidge over 200 pounds, is stretched out across the Tiwal 2’s nonskid decking, his feet dangling off the starboard float; his head pillowed by the port float. Allen is contorted over the top of the centerboard trunk, trying to get his Tiwal’s transom to break from the glassy surface. On starboard, he targets Stewart, who is trying to shake him in the prestart of the first-ever impromptu Tiwal 2 North American Challenge.

“Starboard!” Allen hollers.

“Hold your course!” Stewart retorts as he starts to bear away.

Allen can’t resist, and he too bears away as the two converge, plowing right into Stewart’s lap. The rubber boats simply bounce off each other and carry on up the course on opposite tacks.

“It’s Tiwal racing!” shouts its designer and energetic young visionary, Marion Excoffon, who is observing the comical two-boat slugfest from our Highfield RIB. “There are no rules. Only to have fun!”

Fun sailing is the way of the Tiwal tribe, an almost cult-like sailing community in Europe where hundreds of owners of these high-pressure, inflatable sailboats gather on lakes and Mediterranean beaches to play together.

Yes, they are “toy” boats, Excoffon says, but even as playthings, racing is irresistible whenever there’s more than one. It is also designed as a toy for a cruising boat that “allows you to sail and have an amazing moment around your boat while at anchor,” Excoffon says.

The Tiwal 2 is not to be ­confused with the larger Tiwal 3, a Boat of the Year finalist of the past, which has aluminum-bar racks for hiking. Customers asked for a smaller version that was also kinder to the gelcoat of their cruising boats and superyachts. The 9-foot, PVC-built Tiwal 2 weighs only 20 pounds. Add its marine-grade, coated plywood rudder and centerboard, ropes, hardware, five-piece carbon mast and bulletproof sail from North, and the whole enchilada is still only 60 pounds.

Portability is what has earned the Tiwal line of boats numerous innovation awards in Europe. When broken down to its bits, the entire craft fits into two duffle bags that are small enough to stuff into a lazar­ette or into the trunk of a Mini Cooper. Tiwal inflatables are standard equipment now in the toy boxes of superyachts, which Excoffon says is 20 percent of their market, where there can never be enough water toys.

“We’ve sold about 80 of them since this summer,” she says. “For less than $5,000, this boat is good for the whole family to share nice moments with your child, or to go have fun and play in good breeze. The boat is adaptable to different people, and adaptable to the wind.”

The judges agree with that much. They sail it first in glassy, drifting conditions, goof off and laugh their way to sunset. (Racing is ultimately abandoned, so there is no clear winner of the Tiwal Challenge.) With a gale in the forecast, however, they request a resail later in the week.

Allen takes the first spin, into frothy whitecaps whipped up by an opposing tide and wind at the entrance to the Severn River: “Downwind, in the 20-knot puffs and bigger waves, it was a little squirrelly, but once I got into flatter water and went power-reaching along, the thing was ripping and planing easily. Then I started playing with moving my weight and using my feet to push it around like a surfboard in the waves. It was so much fun. The rudder is nice and responsive; it turned on a dime.”

In one “angry puff of 30 knots” that comes along, he lets the sail luff, waits in “hang mode” and lets it pass. “The boat is quite buoyant, which is a nice safety element if a kid got caught out in too much breeze,” he says.

Tacking and jibing are easy, Allen adds, because of the buoyancy; and by vang sheeting and hardening the cunningham, he motors upwind. “I was surprised the bow wasn’t flexing all over the place, so whatever air pressure and stiffness they have going on there, it really works,” he says. “It was by far one of the most fun boats of the week. I’m a Tiwal fan—you can quote me on that.”

Stewart is a fan as well, but also claims to be 2 knots faster than Allen upwind because he’s heavier and able to use more of the sail. “I had a great time,” he says. “It’s one of those boats where we knew we were going to get wet and have fun. And amazingly, we didn’t break it.”

Not for lack of trying, though. Once, or maybe twice, Stewart ungracefully pearled in the photo boat’s wake and ­pirouetted into the brown bay waters.

He’s a big guy, but he easily hauled himself back into the boat, up forward on the wing deck. “I could easily grab the bar that is part of the mast structure and pull myself right in,” he reports. “There are also handles on the tubes to grab hold of if you need to.”

Powlison, meanwhile, boasts of sailing it in the most breeze: “It was nuking.” He thoroughly enjoys hiking hard off the supple tubes beneath his hamstrings. The wing, he says, is a nice comfortable platform, although maybe a little slippery toward the back: “A couple of times, I almost slid right off.”

His jibes are the smoothest of the team, and his suggestion in strong breeze is to simply “do it quickly.”

“It’s sensitive to steering,” he says. “I could throw it around in the jibe, and it would spin right around the centerboard. It’s a cool little boat that’s well engineered, and as we showed, it can handle the big stuff. We sailed it at both ends of the wind range, and the light-air part was fun too.”

See All Winners

Other Winners:

• 2020 Boat of the Year
• Best Crossover
• Best Multihull
• Best Foiler
• Best Dinghy

The post Boat of the Year 2020 Best Dinghy: Tiwal 2 appeared first on Sailing World.

A Board of Directors recommendation to select the RS:X as the Men’s and Women’s Windsurf Equipment was rejected meaning a new proposal will be required and the process on selecting the Equipment for the Mixed Two Person Offshore Keelboat was also confirmed.

Before Council made its decisions on the Paris 2024 Equipment, the Board of Directors updated Council on its current plans for the Olympic Classes Contract. This included the position on implementing World Sailing’s Olympic Equipment Strategy (FRAND) agreed by Council in November 2018. In order to provide certainty for MNAs, sailors and teams, the Board will engage in contractual discussions only until 1 August 2019. If by that time no agreement is reached, the Board will report to Council that no agreement has been concluded and Council will then have to select new Equipment for the relevant Event.

Ahead of the debate, 21 Council members voted in favor of all votes on the Olympic Equipment being held in secret with 20 against. As a result, every vote cast was secret.

Men’s and Women’s One Person Dinghy

The Laser was selected as the Paris 2024 Men’s and Women’s One Person Dinghy Equipment, subject to agreement of the Olympic Classes Contract for 2024, following a ballot vote. Under Regulation 21.1.3 (e), the decision on selecting the Equipment has to be made before 31 December 2019. Council members voted on deferring the selection of the Equipment to the 2019 Annual Conference but this was rejected meaning a decision had to be made in London.

The next step was to vote on the Equipment Committee recommendation to select the RS Aero. Their recommendation was rejected.

The process moved to a ballot and Council members were able to vote on the four boats that were part of the process – the D-Zero, Laser, Melges 14 and RS Aero.

The Laser won in the first round of votes. For the Men’s One Person Dinghy, 36 voted for the Laser and five voted for the RS Aero. The D-Zero and Melges 14 received zero votes and there was one abstention. For the Women’s One Person Dinghy, 37 voted for the Laser and four voted for the RS Aero. The D-Zero and Melges 14 received zero votes and there was one abstention.

Men’s and Women’s Windsurfer

As the Men’s and Women’s Windsurfer Equipment is under a re-evaluation procedure, World Sailing’s Board of Directors have authority on making recommendations to World Sailing’s Council. The Board of Directors recommendation was to select the RS:X as the Equipment. 19 Council members voted to accept the recommendation, 23 voted to reject and there were zero abstentions. As a result, the recommendation was rejected. The Board of Directors will now have to propose a new recommendation to the Council.

Mixed Kiteboard

The Equipment Committee recommended to Council that they should approve the IKA Formula Kite Class as the Equipment for the Mixed Kiteboard Event. Forty Council members voted to approve the recommendation subject to agreement of the Olympic Classes Contract for 2024. One member rejected and one abstained.

Mixed Two Person Dinghy

World Sailing’s Council approved the 470, subject to agreement of the Olympic Classes Contract for 2024, as the Equipment for the Mixed Two Person Dinghy following the recommendation from the Equipment Committee. 41 members voted in favor of the 470. One member was against the 470 and there were zero abstentions.

RELATED: Olympic Sailing Menu Changed for Paris 2024

Mixed Two Person Offshore Keelboat

Submission M01-19, which proposed a way forward with the procedure for selecting the Equipment, was put forward by the Board of Directors in advance of the Mid-Year Meeting and was approved by Council. 39 members were in favor with two rejecting and zero abstentions. The Submission proposed that World Sailing’s Council shall select a list of different Equipment which it considers to meet the key criteria of the event by December 2019 and then decide on the Equipment, selecting from the list no later than 31 December 2023. The Board agreed to amend the date to meet the key criteria of the event from 31 December 2019 to 31 December 2020 which Council approved.

MNAs, Classes and Manufacturers will now be invited to propose Equipment for the list. A Working Party with members from the Equipment Committee, Offshore Committee and Events Committee will evaluate the Equipment against the key criteria and present the recommended list for Council approval in November 2020.

The list will provide event organizers, MNAs and sailors with diverse opportunities to train and compete in Equipment that is tested, readily available and affordable in their continent. Postponing the decision of the Equipment that will be supplied at the Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition will also promote fair opportunities for all MNAs.

Any changes to the Regulations that Council makes must also be ratified by our Annual General Meeting in November.

The post Musical Chairs with Olympic Sailing Events appeared first on Sailing World.

Editor’s Note: Upon finishing the recent Chicago YC’s Race to Mackinac, I opened my email to learn that the great Bruce Kirby had passed on July 18 at the age of 92. An amazing man he was, not only for his yacht designs and innovation, but for his incredible hand on the editorial helm of Sailing World in its early days. His columns were so sharp, eloquent and loaded with information that they remain a pleasure to read today. A true newspaperman, he was. “Young Dave,” is how he’d always address me on the phone, “you’re doing great work, but where the hell is my copy of the latest issue?” For some reason, he kept getting bounced off the comp list and I know it annoyed him to no end. Rightfully so.

We enjoyed many phone calls over the years during the torturous lawsuit over his Laser royalties, a battle that I’m sure brought great undue stress and robbed him of a few hard-earned golden years. “Happy to report Federal Court in Connecticut today awarded Bruce Kirby, Inc. $6.8 million settlement in our suit against Laser builders.—BK,” he wrote on February 14, 2020. That, I’m sure, was a happy day for the Kirby family.

Contributing editor Dave Powlison, who literally wrote the book on Laser sailing with Ed Baird awhile back, visited Bruce a few years ago to file the profile below. Once published, he did approve of the story and wrote: “Dave–Reports in from both sides of the border indicate you are the man. I’ve received nothing but very good chatter. Noroton YC is running the complete yarn, with pix on their website. We’ll have to do another on my 100th.”

He didn’t get to the century mark, but he will certainly be remembered as one of this century’s most important contributors to the sport. Sail on, Bruce, you will forever remain an inspiration and mentor.

— Dave Reed

Whether he likes it or not, Bruce Kirby’s legacy will be defined by one ­achievement — designing the world’s most-popular sailing dinghy. This one little boat is, of course, the Laser, and its story is the stuff of legend, having flourished from a rudimentary sketch in 1969 to an Olympic one-design class with hull numbers well into six figures. Every success story eventually has its final chapter, however, and for Kirby and the Laser, the conclusion is uncertain. Lawsuits over the little craft with which he’s most identified have consumed his golden years.

The topic of the protracted legal battle involving the Laser’s custodian, LaserPerformance Europe, is a toxic one in the Kirby household in Rowayton, Connecticut. Kirby, who turned 90 in January, and his wife Margo prefer not to speak of it, nor of the protagonists, for fear of more litigation. Instead, when I visit him in mid-December 2018, he reflects on the November 1969 phone call from Ian Bruce, of Canada, asking him to design a boat for a camping-gear company that could be car-topped, the now-famous sketch made during that phone call and the explosion of Laser sales that eventually followed. All led to what is arguably the pinnacle of the sport — selection as an Olympic class for the 1996 Games.

The Laser’s genesis, however, was no fluke. The seeds of Kirby’s design skills were planted long before. Born in 1929, Kirby grew up on the Ottawa River, which runs between Ontario and Quebec, where he first sailed on his father’s 24-foot Great Lakes Skiff class sailboats. Later, as a news editor at the Montreal Star, he says, “When there were lulls, I would draw boats on these pads that you put headlines on.”

After leaving the Star in 1965 to work for the magazine One-Design Yachtsman, colleagues at the Star kiddingly sent him a bunch of papers with doodles of boats they had made on them. “They were pretty bad,” Kirby admits.

“Even today, he still does sketches,” says Margo, his wife of 63 years and sole partner in their business, Bruce Kirby Inc. “He’s always drawing sailboats and hulls.” In their business, he designs the boats, and she does the all the rest. “I consider myself an enabler. I enable him to do his job.”

He carved boats early on as well. Pine was his material of choice and he melted down lead sinkers for his keels. At his Rowayton home, Kirby proudly carries one of his models up from the basement for me to see. He crafted it when he was 14. It’s a sleek sloop with white topsides, black bottom and a varnished deck.

“My aunt, who lived across the street in the summertime, had a beautiful piece of pine at the back of one of her kitchen cupboards to raise the smaller tins up so she could see them,” Kirby says. “I had been eye-balling it for a long time and finally asked her if I could have it.” He carved the outside first and then chiseled out the inside, being careful to leave the wood thicker around the keel than anywhere else.

“He won trophies every year,” Margo says. “He would go ­underwater and watch the boat move through it — as a kid. It’s spooky. Even today, he’ll look at a picture of somebody with a boat in the background, and it’s the boat he sees.”

The model in his hands shows an attention to detail well beyond his youth. There’s an adjustable mast step, handmade sails with broad seams to create proper shapes, and simple tensioning devices on the standing rigging. “It’s had different rigs,” Kirby says, “and this is about the third keel.”

He pauses and tilts his head to examine its underside as if observing water molecules flowing around the hull. “It’s one of the better hull shapes I’ve ever done,” he says. The rigging is loose, and he attempts to tighten the port shroud, fumbling in the process. Macular degeneration has robbed his left eye of most of its vision, so this is not an easy task.

“Now, don’t break it!” Margo cautions.

I lend a hand, and the rig returns to plumb.

If model-making and sketching were the practical elements of Kirby’s education, the academics were self-taught; he has no formal training as a naval architect.

“We got Yachting, Rudder and Yachting World,” Kirby says. “When I was supposed to be doing my homework, I’d grab a stack of these and pore over them.” At age 17, there was a pivotal moment. “My father borrowed a book, Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design, from the local doctor. I slipped it into my bedroom, and the doctor never got it back. I got most of my education from that book. I probably only understood about half of it, but I was just good enough in math to understand the rest.”

He still has the pilfered text, with the front cover inscription, “Medical Arts Building, Ottawa.”

As we walk through a short hallway to the dining room, he stops to point out a framed black-and-white photo leaning against the wall along the floor. “That’s a Beken of Cowes photo,” he says. Taken by the late Keith Beken, an icon of sailing photography, the subject is Kirby and his crew at the 1958 International 14 Team Race Championship in England. The lighting is spectacular; the moment captured is quintessential Beken. But it’s all about the boat. Kirby critically notes, “We didn’t have enough vang on there.”

This championship, he says, was one of the most emotional moments of his life, one that would propel him into the ranks of professional designers. He tells the story in vivid detail: In the regatta’s final and decisive race, he and his Canadian teammates face a New Zealand squad whose boats are better in strong winds. The Canadians struggle on the windward legs, barely hanging on against the faster Kiwi boats. By the final downwind leg to the finish, the race committee is recording puffs up to 30 knots, and through attrition, each team is down to two boats. Kirby and crew, Harry Jemmett, lower their mainsail so only about 12 feet remain aloft. Jemmett sits to leeward, desperately trying to steady the leech while Kirby, on the other side, wings the jib. Because of a heavy mist, he’s unsure where the other Canadian boat is. Kirby finishes first, followed by one of the Kiwis, while the second New Zealand boat, sailing with a cracked mast, is working its way downwind with only a spinnaker.

“I lost sight of our third boat, when it suddenly appeared out of the mist, going like a bat out of hell,” Kirby says. “He had rounded the weather mark, didn’t hoist his chute, reached off and then jibed and reached back. He beat the second Kiwi boat by 50 yards, and we won the event.

“I wasn’t in one of my own 14s in that regatta,” Kirby says, “but it was because of that race that I went home and immediately started designing what became the Kirby Mark I. That was in late 1958. The idea was to create a boat that could beat the Kiwis, but we never came up against them again.”

The Canadian team did win the next team-race championship, two years later, and had good upwind speed in stronger breeze. Over the next 12 years, the Mark I would be followed by four other Kirby 14 designs.

“I recently learned from a 14 buff that for the two or three years the Mark V was being built, no one was buying any other designer’s 14,” Kirby says.

Bruce Kirby the designer had arrived.

The International 14 era also marked the beginning of his partnership with Ian Bruce, who owned a small company in Pointe Clair, Quebec, about 20 miles south of Montreal. Bruce built Kirby’s 14s in fiberglass, beginning with the Mark III.

After their November 1969 phone call, Kirby took his sketch home and drew a full set of lines on mylar drafting film, then followed with deck, daggerboard, rudder and sail plan for the yet-to-be named boat. He sent a copy to Bruce and kept one copy for himself. But then the camping company changed its mind — they didn’t want a sailboat. “I still have a letter to Ian, saying, ‘Hang on to the design. That little boat might make us a buck someday,’” Kirby says.

In Kirby’s basement, I watch as he rummages through drawers in a metal draftsman’s cabinet. “I know it’s here somewhere,” he tells me. We go through five or 10 drawers before he finally says, quietly, “Here it is.” Lying in the drawer, on top of some of old photos, as if randomly tossed there, is a large manila folder with neat draftsman’s lettering, “Laser, Original Lines, 1969 and Sketch.” He hands me the folder, and there they are. It’s almost like being in the presence of some sacred relics, which, in a way, I suppose they are to the more than tens of thousands who sail or have sailed the boat. I keep waiting for a beam of sunlight to come streaming through the basement window to illuminate the moment.

The design sat on the shelf until 1971, when Kirby’s magazine, One-Design and Offshore Yachtsman, decided to hold a regatta for boats costing less than $1,000. The regatta was held at the Playboy Club on Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. “I called Ian and asked if he could get a prototype of that boat made in time for the event,” Kirby says. “He said, ‘I’ll build two of them, and we’ll tune them up together.’ But he barely completed one.”

With the boat atop his car, Bruce drove from Montreal to Toronto, where he picked up sailmaker Hans Fogh, who had an untried sail for the new boat tucked under his arm. Off they went, driving through the night to Wisconsin to what was called the America’s Tea Cup, while Kirby flew in from the East Coast.

“The next morning, the three of us put the boat together on the beach. It was the first time the mast had been in the boat,” Kirby says. Fogh built the sail relying only on his experience with Finn rigs. He had not even seen the spars before they arrived in Wisconsin. There was one race the first day, and that evening, Fogh went to Buddy Melges’s loft, recut the sail, and the next day the boat handily won the first race. Then, with a significant lead in the next race, the regatta was called for lack of wind.

“It was quite decidedly the fastest boat there,” Kirby says. Still, the boat also had too much weather helm, so he and Fogh adjusted the sail plan to move the center of effort forward a few inches, shortened the boom 4 or 5 inches and raised the mast to keep the sail area the same.

The next stop for the boat, now officially called Laser, was the New York Boat Show in January 1971. “The success at the Boat Show gave us a hint of what was to come,” Margo says, “although it didn’t really sink in then. We thought, ‘How could this be?’ Those things don’t really happen.” She quickly organized a class, forming the first Laser association in the states, and hosted one of the first Laser regattas in Connecticut, where the magazine was located. Competitors from Ottawa camped in the Kirbys’ backyard.

RELATED: Bringing the Laser to Life

Several years after introducing the Laser, Kirby got a call from Dennis Clark, of the Clark Boat Company in Seattle. They had built some of Kirby’s Mark IV 14s and wanted to know if he would design a quarter-tonner for them.

“I had never designed a keelboat, so the first thing I did was call [C&C designer] George Cuthbertson,” Kirby says. “I didn’t want help designing the boat, but I did want help creating the measurement certificate. He sent me certificates for two or three boats in that range, which helped me figure out the righting moment and how that influenced other things.”

The result was the San Juan 24, of which 1,200 were built. “The IOR people put out a book every year that lists all the boats that have been measured for a certificate,” Kirby says. “A while back, I discovered that the San Juan 24 was the most measured boat in the world for a few years in the 1970s. It was a big thing in those days.”

In the past year, Kirby has been communicating with a Dutch sailor who reports that San Juan 24s are raced in Europe. But the strangest San Juan 24 story was from many years ago when, according to Kirby, “some madman from California sailed one from Los Angeles to Honolulu by simply following the paths of aircraft flying the route. With scores of planes going to and from Hawaii, day and night, and with no other place for the planes to go, ­navigation was not a problem.”

With three reputable designs to his name, Kirby left the magazine business in 1975 to pursue yacht design full-time. And, of course, continue sailing. He raced Lasers intensely for a few years, finishing sixth at the 1972 North Americans on Lake Geneva and fifth at the U.S. Nationals at Brant Beach, New Jersey, the same year. A plastic cube trophy from the North Americans sits on one of his office shelves. “They still owe me a cube for the U.S. Nationals,” Kirby says.

His other trophies are relegated to the basement, laid out across two 7-foot tables that once served as drafting surfaces for many other noteworthy designs, including the Sonar and Ideal 18. “The two tables were beside each other, and especially in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was most busy, I would often have a boat on each board,” Kirby says. “If I got bored working on one, I’d go to the other. The 12 Meters, in particular, were so full of very, very fine calculations that it was a nice break to go to the other board and do a 14.”

Kirby designed the 12 Meters Canada I and Canada II for the America’s Cup, the latter of which is represented by a large half-model hanging in his dining room — a white hull with a bold, red horizontal stripe just below the sheer line, interrupted only toward the aft end with the Canadian maple leaf.

“We never really had enough money,” he says. “We were going to build a new Canada II, but we couldn’t afford it, so we took Canada I and put a winged keel on it. There was no science behind it. It was just from having seen the Aussie boat.”

Kirby’s Canadian heritage runs deep, having represented the country in three Olympics — twice in the Finn (1956 and 1964) and once in the Star (1968). Recently, he was awarded the Order of Canada, the country’s second-highest honor, for his contributions to sailing. He’s met Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth, again, for what he has done in sailing. There are few boxes left for him to check.

One of the things that thrills Kirby most is the number of times he’s had strangers tell him how the Laser changed their lives.

“The first time that happened to me was maybe 20 years ago,” he says. “A fairly young kid came up to me and said, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ I asked, ‘What?’ He said, ‘I was headed down the wrong path. I was on drugs, and I knew where that was headed. But a friend of mine grabbed me by the back of my neck and said come here, I want to show you something. And he took me to the local lake and said, you need to learn how to sail one of these.’”

Recently, at Connecticut’s Cedar Point YC, a Swedish sailor approached him to share a similar story. “These fellows who sail the boat today do it at a much higher, more intense level than I ever did,” Kirby says. “These guys start at 17, and it becomes a major part of their existence, winter as well as summer. It’s really upper crust for people to come up to me and tell me that.”

These are the highs, but there have also been plenty of personal low points associated with the Laser. In the late 1970s, Kirby and Bruce had a falling out, largely over financial matters. “He should have made a lot of money on the boat, but he was hardly ever out of debt,” Kirby says. “I thought he should have charged more for the boat that first couple of years — maybe $720 — and people would have still bought it. Instead, he insisted on the low price of $695. Plus, marketing was basically Ian’s show, and he was not a businessman. I was always beating on his accounting department. I knew that was better than letting it slip and go altogether.”

Bruce died in 2016, and Kirby admits he didn’t know he was ill. “Maybe,” he says with a tinge of regret, “it would have been better if I had been able to at least call him.”

Then, there is 2010, when he discovered he had macular ­degeneration. As the fear of going blind weighed heavily on him, he says, his royalty checks for the Laser stopped coming. Soon, he found himself embroiled in a protracted, eight-year legal battle involving LaserPerformance Europe, its principal, Farzaad Rastegar, the International Laser Class, and the International Sailing Federation (now World Sailing).

The intricacies of the case are Grisham-worthy, and suits and countersuits followed until the judge ultimately ruled in favor of LaserPerformance in 2018. Litigation continues, so Kirby is reluctant to talk about it, but he and Margo wear their feelings on their sleeves.

“We would have had a different life if this hadn’t happened,” says Margo. “But we have survived the anger, the disappointment. I couldn’t believe they would do this to him after what he’s provided for them, for decades. But I guess when money’s involved, ­everything else falls away.”

Kirby says, “It’s funny because I don’t remember anger — I remember disappointment.” What will happen next? “Nobody really knows. We don’t speak to anyone anymore and haven’t for some years. It’s so complicated that I don’t really have it clear in my own mind right now. The whole thing breaks my heart, to see something that was so great go completely bad. I’m probably owed about a million bucks from this, but I don’t think I’ll ever see it.”

It’s a sunny day in Rowayton, just a few weeks before year’s end, but it feels more like the middle of October. I’ve just finished lunch with Kirby at Brendan’s 101, one of his favorite lunchtime haunts. As I hold the door for him to pass through ahead of me, he says quietly and with a subtle smile, “You know, people usually go in front of me — so they can catch me if I fall.”

But it’s no joke. His pace is slow and deliberate. After years of hiking on International 14s, Lasers, Finns and Stars, his knees are shot, he has a broken back and he wears hearing aids.“It’s kind of strange,” he says in a somewhat baffled tone, “because no Kirby male has lived anywhere near this age.” His brother died at 42, his father at 58.

Yet, he remains sharp as a tack. He’s been working on his memoir, and says he still has two more chapters to write.

“Whether I’ll ever finish those or not, I don’t know,” he confesses. “I do find myself searching for words, and they’re not always there.”

The last boat to come off Kirby’s drafting board was a 38-foot yawl for author and magazine alum Nat Philbrick, in 2010.

“Part of it is my eyes,” Kirby says when asked if his design days are over. “If somebody came along with something I’d really like to do, and it’s a person who would be nice to work with, I might give it a try.”

As for sailing, it’s all memories at this point. On the Kirby fireplace mantel is a framed photo taken in Vancouver of a Laser on a mad reach, the skipper hidden by spray, but the sail’s nationality letters are clear: CAN. I ask his thoughts when looking at it, and without missing a beat, almost as if he knew what I was going to ask, he says, “I’m right in that boat. I can feel it immediately.” Then he adds with a wry smile, “Only I’d probably be rolling over to windward.”He studies the photo a bit longer.

“I’d just like to be out there. And, of course, to be as far up in the fleet as possible.”

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