Most Influential Person in Dinghy History

Who has been the most influential person in the history of dinghy sailing? Some suggestions: Uffa Fox, Jack Holt, Ian Proctor, Frank Bethwaite, Phil Morrison, Bruce Kirby, John Spencer, Ian Howlett, Paul Elvstrom, Hobie Alter, Nathanael Herreshoff, John Westell, Jim Saltonstall? Anyone else? My list is UK biased and undoubtedly there are other Americans, Australians and Europeans who could be considered.

Cast your vote!

Good call on Lexcen, but I don't think he'd make my top 5.  Proctor would though, with the Topper, Wayfarer, numerous successful Merlin Rockets and N12 and his aluminium mast exploits.

Surely Bethwaite should be knighted for services to sailing (designs, the book, the coaching, his children)?

Agree with Uffa at No 1, he is the daddy of dinghy sailing, whilst Spencer is the daddy of 'skiffs' (not the Oz definition).

Stewart Morris - His tactics textbooks are still an easy and refreshing read and were the ones that really got people thinking about racing in the way we do today.  A massive influence.

Ouch, cutting it down to five is tough. It's also very hard to get an international list.....Morrison is one of the great designers but he's basically a UK designer.

It's interesting how much "influence" seems to get down to marketing and design skill combined, not design brilliance alone. For example, Uffa didn't have the first planing boat. I don't think either Frank or Julian Bethwaite (excellent as they are) have won a championship with their designs in any open-design class outside Cherubs (the 18 wins came after new designs were banned from the class). Their overall influence is enormous and of course the 49er kicked serious in the ISAF trials, but in terms of numbers of winning Oz skiff/development designs Nash may stand alone.

So my pick.....

1) Uffa. Not 'cause he planed first (he didn't) but because his books popularised the dinghy and he made a very fine boat.

2) Paul Elvstrom. Not just because he took sailing to a different level, but because he showed that dinghy sailors were the world's best by winning the Star and 5.5m worlds - that shocked the sailors of the time.

3) Holt and Moore. Have to be taken as a partnership; without Moore's marketing and organisation Holt may not have been anything like as influential. The performance of the Hornet's sliding seat in the first ISAF doublehander trials spurred the FD, 505 and Osprey to bring on the trap (which was not invented for the Osprey, which did not win the trials despite what their website says).

4) Frank and Julian Bethwaite.

5) William F. Crosby. The Snipe was the first really popular international dinghy; it showed the way to chine home-made designs and must have influenced others; it even lead to the VJ which was THE Australian trainer class and (after being flattened, up rigged, lightened and fitted with twin sliding seats) had enormous influence on skiff design by getting Syd Corser to commission Len Randell to design a "big VJ" which obliterated all comers in the 14s (then as now the only widespread Skiff class in Oz) and set the basic style that won all the way to the "Open" 14 worlds of '79.

However, there are many other people who seem to have had enormous influence on the sport. They include;

Ian Bruce and Bruce Kirby. The Laser, top clean simple production I-14s, and Ian had (and has) a lot of influence on the Bethwaites.....hm Ok, not exactly unknowns!

Morrison, Proctor, etc.....but their influence outside the UK isn't up to the excellence of their skills.

Ruth Lindemann - daughter of the man who invented klegecell foam, she created what were probably the first sandwich 'glass dinghies (1955).

Spencer- but there were earlier boats of equal weight and performance around, and their designers (Charlie Cunningham of the Gwen 12, father of Lindsay, and a group lead by Peter Mander) were also very influential.

Andy Paterson and John Claridge. Strange to put rivals as a pair, but it seems they (along with other British Mothies of the '70s and '80s ie Claridge, Eyre, Cox) showed the world how well skinny boats worked, then maybe kicked off the foilers (I think and assume Wardie etc directly followed AP's boat but I haven't heard directly and the Magnum T foil was clearly an influence).

Cortland and Heyniger - the Sunfish changed the way Americans think of dinghy sailing and helped spur the Laser and Windsurfer.

Peter Mander - Won NZ's first gold medal and first 2 world titles, sparking off the whole Kiwi international thing. Convinced 18 foot skiff sailors of the value of traps and lightweight boats with the 90kg Intrigue of 1952. Pushed the R Class, the first really lightweight Kiwi class, hard.

Michael Nash. Changed the design of Skiffs by introducing NS14 dinghy theories in the '80s.

Some unknown Euro Mothie and Richard  Court; one created the wing, the other made it famous in 18s (although the R Class had been trapping from wings for some time and Sydney 18s had a truce to not use them to save $$$).

Rob Roy Macgregor and Paul Butler; one started the first international small sailboat class (the Canoes)  and the other created a 30in by 16' 45kg (approx) hollow-sparred cam-cleated sliding-seat fully-battened flyer by 1886.

Manfred Curry. and Gulcher and Van Essen; the FD may have been more important than we often think.

Ben's Taipan, like most 18s, may have made more noise than really having influence. The chine lightweight revolution had been in all the other skiffs earlier, and the 18s went back to round-bilge heavier boats for years afterwards. Whether that was because the skiffies were too conservative or whether the big boats were faster is a bone of contention among those who were there (Taipan's crew goes one way, the guy who took her over to win the nationals votes the other).

Bruce Kirby denies straight-out that the Laser was influenced by the Contender, which is surprising. But the Contender did signal the arrival of the flat, light hard chine boat (OK, in the later versions the chines were rounded with a log and ISAF didn't allow it to be as light as Ben wanted....but it's the thought that counts!)


Stewart Morris? Which books???


Edited by CT249

I don't think it is Stewart Morris CT249 hasn't heard of, but his books!

Morris is the greatest Int 14 sailor of all time. Maybe Austin Farrar should be on the lists - his 14's were the fastest for a decade or more, and his wing masts have inspired some very, very fast machines...