Yachting World’s surprising small boat legacy
You may know Yachting World as the home of yacht sailing, but back in the 1940s and 1950s, the magazine sponsored more than 30 small boat designs, simply to make sailing and boating more accessible to more people, writes Nigel Sharp.
Most of them were sailing dinghies, several of which are still popular today, including the GP14, Solo,
Cadet and Heron. Originally, all of their names had the prefix ‘Yachting World’. Today, the only one which has retained this is the Yachting World Dayboat.
YW’S editor of the time, Group Captain EF ‘Teddy’ Haylock, commissioned G O’brien Kennedy to design the Dayboat, with the brief that it should be round bilge and suitable for construction in double diagonal, clinker or carvel; a boat for the crew to ‘sit in, not on’. It wasn’t intended for racing but was to have good performance and be ‘suitable for family parties, picnicking, fishing and for generally knocking about in semi-open waters, estuaries and rivers’.
In October 1949 the magazine advertised full sets of plans for £2 2s.
The ethos of the Yachting
World-sponsored boats was to encourage amateur construction and most of them were plywood/ chine designs. Initially the magazine banned professional construction of the Dayboat, but it soon became apparent that the round bilge design was just too difficult for most amateurs. Very detailed building instructions were later published in a two-part article, and in 1955 the amateur-only rule was rescinded.
By that time about 30 boats had been built but, because there were no class rules, they differed widely, especially in terms of hull weight. In 1955 a class association was formed, rules were written and a minimum hull weight (including the galvanised steel centreboard) of 450lb was agreed. The resulting relative uniformity of the boats made racing them more popular, and in 1957 the first national championship was held. Five years later, about 350 boats had been built.
In 1968 the rules changed to allow glassfibre construction for ‘smooth’ hulls, and for simulated clinker hulls from 1979. In total, 677 boats have now been registered, the last of which was launched in 2019.