Prototype Windsong class.
WoodenBoat Magazine 301
ISSUE NO. 301

November / December 2024

Editor's Page

Thrill and Tradition

In the mid-to-late 1980s, I was passionate about windsurfing. I kept a board in the back of my pickup truck and, when the conditions were ideal, I would drop everything to go sailing. What, you might ask, was the attraction of it?

Someone once said to me that windsurfing is the purest form of sailing. Upon decades of reflection, I couldn’t agree more. There’s no rudder; rather, there’s just the mast articulating on a universal joint to steer the board. A sailor is literally holding the center of effort in their hands when windsurfing, and the center of lateral resistance is right there below the feet. These two terms move solidly from the theoretical to the practical when windsurfing: rake the mast aft, and the board heads up; rake it forward, and the board bears away. It’s rig-balance personified; weather helm has consequences beyond a heavy tiller. The sport certainly made me a better sailor.

I don’t know why I drifted away from windsurfing, but the sport’s popularity certainly crashed after a while. I think it had something to do with gear intensity: To really remain engaged in windsurfing and keep up with fellow sailors, one eventually needed—or at least craved—a “quiver” of sails and boards for various conditions. I recall cars stuffed with sails, wetsuits, and other gear. The purity of the learning days—of one sail, one board, and one sailor—bled out of it.

Somehow, through genetic predisposition or osmosis, my son Linus recently developed a passion for windsurfing, and resolved to spend a portion of his summer earnings on a board. It turns out there are some real bargains out there due to leftovers from the days of gear-stuffed cars. Together we found a board, for which Linus paid a hundred bucks cash, and he let me take my first ride in 35 years. My balance and strength were rusty, but the muscle memory remained. And I was reminded of a realization I’d had many years ago when dabbling in Laser-class dinghies: board-style boats such as the Laser offer much of the acceleration-induced thrill of a windsurfer, but a person of modest abilities doesn’t fall overboard every few minutes or get exhausted from uphauling the sail and making wobbly tacks. Maybe a Laser was where it was at.

For years, I’ve nursed along a dream of collaborating with a designer to develop a home-buildable, wooden Laser-type boat driven by an off-the-shelf rig. I even called Bruce Kirby, the Laser’s designer, to discuss the idea. It would be called the Lignum Laser, I told him. Bruce was cordial in entertaining the concept but, understandably, didn’t want to dilute the success of the Laser given that, with nearly a quarter million of them sailing in 140 countries, it is the most popular one-design in the world. The idea has nagged at me and evolved over the years. Maybe it could be a two-person boat, or for a single adult who’s outgrown a Laser or needs a little more boom clearance or room to sprawl.

I finally had an “aha” moment recently when Nic Compton pitched his article on the Windsong-class dinghy that appears on the cover of this issue. For me, it checks all of the boxes: It’s strip-planked and sheathed in fiberglass—a tough, stiff, lightweight, and straightforward construction method ideal for such a boat. As its designer, John Owles, says in Nic’s article beginning on page 38, “I just whittled and whittled and whittled until I reduced the hull resistance to as low as possible.” It planes at 12 knots in 20 knots of breeze. It appears to be thrilling yet forgiving, not requiring the acrobatics of a trapeze or the instability of a 16-Foot skiff. It’s beautiful. It’s lug-rigged. And it’s wooden.

Needless to say, I’m captivated by the Windsong. It rekindles, for me, something from those thrilling days of windsurfing and Laser sailing while adhering to my enduring draw to good wooden boats grounded in tradition.

Matt Murphy

Editor of WoodenBoat Magazine

Blanchard Senior knockabout.
Page 24

ILLUSION

by Lawrence W. Cheek

Classic boats do not necessarily spring from auspicious beginnings. As the boatbuilder Norman C. Blanchard of Seattle stated in his memoir, Knee-Deep in Shavings, one day in 1933 a group of Sunday strollers stopped into his Lake Union boatworks to ponder the 23' Star-class sailboats the shop had been building.

 

Preview Article
WINDSONG
Page 32

WINDSONG

by Nic Compton

It was just after sunrise when I arrived at Burnham Overy Staithe in Norfolk, England, to witness the birth of a new racing class. Despite the early hour, people bustled on the foreshore in front of the massive, rustic boathouse. Four new dinghies were on trailers being readied for launching. Although they were built of wood, there was no mistaking the shallow draft and flat run aft of a hull designed for planing. The carbon-fiber spars and modern rigging also pointed to the boat’s racing pedigree.

Preview Article
BRITANNIA
Page 48

The Unretired Ian Smith

by Nigel Sharp

Ian Smith of Sydney, Australia, eats, sleeps and breathes wooden boats. He has built them for clients as a profession and also for himself. He has taught other people how to build them. He has raced aboard them, most notably with his faithful replica of a famous Sydney Harbour 18-Footer BRITANNIA of 1919, which is now in the collections of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

Preview Article
EIDER.
Page 56

Aboard: EIDER

by Matthew P. Murphy • Photographs by Benjamin Mendlowitz

Penbo cruisers are unique in the annals of wooden yacht building. The company that built them, Penobscot Boat Works (aka Penbo) of Rockport, Maine, was founded by the father-and-son team of Carl and Bob Lane in the early 1950s to build wooden runabouts.

Preview Article
A.J. MEERWALD
Page 56

A.J. MEERWALD

by Randall Peffer

One of the things we loved about the A.J. MEERWALD right from the start was how original she was,” Tim Clark said after he and fellow shipwright, Garett Eisele, embarked on a major restoration of the iconic oyster schooner in 2021.

Preview Article
TOMAHAWK
Page 74

The “Save a Classic” Page

by Maynard Bray

One of my goals for as far back as I can remember has been to save good wooden boats. I don’t like waste, and devising ways to recycle worthy old boats became a role I seemed to have a knack for. So, when WoodenBoat Editor Matt Murphy offered me the back page of every issue for spreading the word about needy boats that I felt were worth saving, I jumped at the chance.

Preview Article

From the Community

Classified