18 Facts About Dinghy sailing

Dinghy sailing is the activity of sailing small boats by using five essential controls:.

When racing, the above skills need to be refined and additional skills and techniques learned, such as the application of the "racing rules of Dinghy sailing", boat handling skills when starting and when rounding marks, and knowledge of tactics and strategy.

Charles II of England had a private Dinghy sailing boat presented to him when he returned from exile to England in the 17th century, and he sailed for recreation and competition.

Dinghy sailing wanted yacht racing to be an exercise of skill with all boats being built to the same design.

Dinghy sailing assembled a group of potential owners who agreed to call the boat 'The Water Wag'.

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Towards the end of the 19th century people began to use these small boats for sport and recreational Dinghy sailing, utilising the opportunities for leisure afforded by the Industrial Revolution.

Larger privately used Dinghy sailing boats had developed separately, and have resulted in the yachts of today.

Development of the sailing dinghy was helped in the early 20th century by Uffa Fox, an English boat designer and sailing enthusiast.

Dinghy sailing developed and contributed to many dinghy classes that are still with us nearly a century later: the Albacore, International 14, National 12, Jet 14, Firefly and Flying Fifteen.

Dinghy sailing introduced the major advance of hull shapes that can plane, and which can therefore reach beyond the usual speed limits for small sailing boats.

Dinghy sailing gained 52 first places, two second places and three third places out of 57 race starts that year.

Note: Graham Anderson in his 1999 book Fast Light Boats, a Century of Kiwi Innovation argues that planing centreboard Dinghy sailing boats were introduced into New Zealand in the early 20th century – well before Uffa Fox popularised the concept.

Dinghy sailing was to transform the class with the introduction of his first planing hull design, Avenger, in 1927.

Dinghy sailing's aim was to achieve as light a construction as possible using the materials of the day – there was no carbon fibre or Kevlar then.

The Mirror Dinghy sailing was predominantly built using stitch and glue, while the Enterprise and Heron is an example of a boat built using plywood on a timber frame.

Dinghy sailing designs are often referred to as "classes"; these classes are usually categorised as one design, open, or restricted.

Examples of these include the Wayfarer, arguably the GP14, the Tideway, the Laser Stratos, the Drascombe series of dinghies, the CL 16 and the Laser 16, the Roamer Cruising Dinghy sailing, designed by Eric Coleman an early member of the Dinghy sailing Cruising Association, plus many designs of Iain Oughtred, John Welsford and Francois Vivier.

Examples of classic sailing dinghies are Minto, Mirror Dinghy, Fatty Knees, Trinka, Bauer, Whitehall and Gig Harbor.