The Front Runner is a small day sailing dinghy. It is a high-performance, responsive, and comfortable one-design class sailboat. It is stable and user-friendly, having an immense cockpit with all control lines leading aft (to the cockpit). While designed for racing, it also functions as a small cruising day sailer because of the storage space under the deck in the bow.
The Front Runner was developed by Bill Spencer in the early 1990s, culminating in its production starting in 1996. The sailboat was produced in three different places: Gloucester, Virginia, Irvington, Virginia, and Hollywood, Maryland. It has a total of 202 square feet (18.8m2) of sail area (including only the mainsail and jib; with the spinnaker it reaches 527 square feet (49.0m2) of sail area). For the spinnaker it has a retractable bowsprit. The main is loose-footed, and its jib is roller furling. It has no trapeze due to its exceptional balance and hull construction. Its rig, a low-profile, 3 point fractional Sloop rig, kick-up rudder, and swinging keel make the Front Runner a high-performance sailing craft.
A sailing vessel's rig is its arrangement of masts, sails and rigging. Examples include a schooner rig, cutter rig, junk rig, etc. A rig may be broadly categorized as "fore-and-aft", "square", or a combination of both. Within the fore-and-aft category there is a variety of triangular and quadrilateral sail shapes. Spars or battens may be used to help shape a given kind of sail. Each rig may be described with a sail plan—formally, a drawing of a vessel, viewed from the side.
A scow is a smaller type of barge. Some scows are rigged as sailing scows. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, scows carried cargo in coastal waters and inland waterways, having an advantage for navigating shallow water or small harbours. Scows were in common use in the American Great Lakes and other parts of the U.S., Canada, southern England, and New Zealand. In modern times their main purpose is for recreation and racing; there are also garbage scows for aquatic transport of refuse.
A jibe (US) or gybe (Britain) is a sailing maneuver whereby a sailing vessel reaching downwind turns its stern through the wind, which then exerts its force from the opposite side of the vessel. Because the mainsail boom can swing across the cockpit quickly, jibes are potentially dangerous to person and rigging compared to tacking. Therefore, accidental jibes are to be avoided while the proper technique must be applied so as to control the maneuver. For square-rigged ships, this maneuver is called wearing ship.
An iceboat is a recreational or competition sailing craft supported on metal runners for traveling over ice. One of the runners is steerable. Originally, such craft were boats with a support structure, riding on the runners and steered with a rear blade, as with a conventional rudder. As iceboats evolved, the structure became a frame with a seat or cockpit for the iceboat sailor, resting on runners. Steering was shifted to the front.
Hobie Cat is a company that manufactures sailing catamarans, surfboards, sailboats, kayaks, stand-up paddle boards, and pedalboards as the Hobie Cat Company. It was founded in 1961 by Hobart Alter, who originally manufactured surfboards. Its line of products has included more than twenty sailing craft, plus a variety of other watercraft.
The Tasar is a 14.83-foot (4.52 m) fiberglass 2 person sailing dinghy with a mainsail and jib. Designed by Frank Bethwaite of Sydney in 1975, the boat was technologically advanced for its time and continues to evolve. Aimed at a husband-and-wife or parent-and-child crew hence no spinnaker, it is designed for a combined crew weight of around 140 kg. The hull weighs 68 kg, and is of sandwich foam construction. The hull has a fine angle at the bow to reduce wave impact drag with unusually clean and sharp chines aft to ensure very free planing and outstanding stability. The foam cored hull is stiff and light and the advanced hull shape, together with an innovative rig which combines a rotating mast with a fully battened main sail, allows the Tasar to plane upwind with the crew normally hiked. The wide beam and a cockpit designed for comfortable hiking make the Tasar easy, fun and very exciting to sail in winds up to 25 knots (46 km/h).
The 29er is a two-person high performance sailing skiff designed by Julian Bethwaite and first produced in 1998. Derived from the Olympic class 49er class, it is raced in the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships. The 29er is able to reach high speeds fairly quickly by having a sleek and hydrodynamic hull and will often exceed the wind speed when planing both up and downwind.
A fractional rig on a sailing vessel consists of a foresail, such as a jib or genoa sail, that does not reach all the way to the top of the mast.
The Mutineer 15 is a 15-foot (4.6 m) long fractional sloop sailboat currently manufactured by Nickels Boat Works. It has a dinghy centerboard hull, no ballast, and displaces 410 pounds. The Mutineer 15 has a 6-foot (1.8 m) beam, maximum draw of 4.08 feet (1.24 m), and has 150 square feet (14 m2) of sail area. The Mutineer 15 is commonly used for both day sailing and class racing. The Mutineer 15 can be comfortably sailed as a day sailer with a crew of four, but can also be raced with a crew of two, or even single-handed by semi-experienced to experienced sailors.
An asymmetrical spinnaker is a sail used when sailing between about 90 and 165 degrees from the angle of the wind. Also known as an "asym", "aspin", or "A-sail" it can be described as a cross between a genoa jib and a spinnaker. It is asymmetric like a genoa, but like a spinnaker, its luff is unstructured; its leading edge is allowed to float freely, unencumbered by an internal wire or hanks attaching it to a stay. Unlike a symmetric spinnaker, the asymmetric does not require a spinnaker pole, since it is fixed (tacked) to the bow or bowsprit. The asymmetrical spinnaker has a larger camber than a genoa and a Spinnaker Mid-Gerth (SMG) -- also called Spinnaker Half Width (SHW) -- measurement greater than the length of its foot.
Wallace “Wally” Ross (1922–2013) was a modern sailing pioneer. As co-author of Sail Power in 1975, Ross contributed to the sport's final intellectualization after 1971 when Arvel Gentry completed his sail theory work using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Wally Ross took his degrees from Cornell University between 1944 and 1948, after serving with the 10th Mountain Division during the Second World War.
The Water Wag is the oldest one-design dinghy in existence, having been devised in 1886 and formalised as a one-design class in Ireland in 1887. It was last modified in 1900. The class is still sailed to this day, notably with large Water Wag fleets racing during summer evenings from Dún Laoghaire harbour on Dublin Bay. The Water Wag class is administered by the Water Wags club, based in Dún Laoghaire.
A sail is a tensile structure, which is made from fabric or other membrane materials, that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails may be made from a combination of woven materials—including canvas or polyester cloth, laminated membranes or bonded filaments, usually in a three- or four-sided shape.
The Searunner 31 is a trimaran sailboat designed by Jim Brown in the 1960s. It is the most popular boat in the Searunner series, which includes models from 25 ft (7.6 m) to 40 ft (12 m).
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sailing:
The Laser 28 is a Canadian-built sailboat designed by New Zealander Bruce Farr and first produced in 1984.
The Freedom 25 is an American sailboat that was designed by Garry Hoyt as a single-handed racer-cruiser and first built in 1980.
The Topper Topaz is a British single-handed or two-handed sailing dinghy that was designed as a beginner and intermediate racer.
The Impulse 21, also called the Impulse Eagle, is an American trailerable sailboat that was designed by William E. Cook as a one-design racer and day sailer, It was first built in 1986.
The Rhodes 18 is an American trailerable day sailer or sailing dinghy that was designed by Philip Rhodes in 1938 and first built in 1948. It is Rhodes' design #448.
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