• Light for size
• Large sail area for waterline length
• Large Righting moment for width of hull e.g. flares, racks,  trapizes
• Planes upwind and down.
• Uses apparent wind to sail down wind
• Something where just getting around the course is an acheavment.

Oh OK .....

So a xkiff would be a wide and flat Contender then, but only with full approval of those who sail in Australia

I did intend this to be a a genuine discussion and put it in banter by mistake, thanks to those who responded sensibly.

I wasn't suggesting the Contender is a Skiff, just because I sail one doesn't mean I'm obsessed with them (Cherub and certain MPS sailors take note) but others in the class want to try and draw some connection. I was just wondering if the sailing public would accept this or think it was comical?

It seems that putting wings on something gives you the right to call a boat a skiff but I just think it looks like an afterthought.

How about thwese 2 simple rules to identify a "High performance sailboat"

1, sails fast upwind (say boatspeed > 50% of true wind speed)

2, sails faster than true wind speed down wind (so at times can sail “off the front of the gust”)

But this is almost (if not totally impossible) as the UK view is that it's a fast planning monohull, the asuuies have a different view because of the historical definition they have. 

Possibly the same as the last two threads on this subject concluded.

If you are Australian, something with very specific historical lineage.

If you are a British dinghy manufacturer, any new product you want to make appear new, fast and exciting.

Seriously, this subject has been done to death several times already.

And that fact really seems to wind up the rest of the SKiff sailing community in Sydney Harbour...

You can define skiff how you like - just accept the Aussies & Kiwis will disagree.  But then again they think a Barbie is something hot to cook on and we think its a plastic plaything that has only ever heard of the colour pink.

To remain as true to the skiff history as possible though I think if you were to come up with a new class and wanted to be call it a skiff then certainly the following are key elements:

light weight, limited rules, challenging to sail, monohull.

OK, I missed it several time then. What topics is it in?

How ever many past threads you look at your not going to get an answer to this question. Last time we had this thread was jsut before the dinghy show so I decided to ask the guys on the MPS stand and I got a genuine "I dont know" from one guy and the other pointed me in the direction of the 49er (i think) message board, as aparently that had a bit from one of the first skiff designers.

But there is to much of a split culture between Aus and UK that we wont ever come to one set of rules I dont believe.

Also a quick though what is the US's position on what a skiff is because there has been a lot of talk of the UK anfd AUS's posn. Does the US have a lot of dinghy/skiff racing etc?

Looks like a good definition to me ...

Sounds good to me too.

Reading Bethwaite's book, what enables a lot of those things to happen is a hull form which transitions imperceptably from displacement to planing mode without creating the big bow wave.  To me this is what differentiates a skiff from a big fast boat like a Contender or Dutchman although I'd be the first to admit there are some classes which blur the line and the 505 with it's new bigger kite certainly falls into that category.

Like I said, blurred the line, but I agree, not a true skiff...

After a lot of looking around, the EARLIEST definition of a skiff (1700s in europe and north america) I can finmd is that a skiff is a 'small flat bottomed tender or canoe'.  By this definition even an oppy is a skiff and to be honest the earliest builders from all those years ago would probably agree. 

However!!!, as designs and technology have evolved so too has the definition associated with the term.  The basis of what people seem to be leaning towards now is based (as i'm sure most of us know) on the 18 footer class in sydney.  As far as I can tell the firrst designs were based on skiff tenders with sails added.  the main reson being that the boats were easy and resonably cheap to build.  However it was accepted that designing them successfully with or without sails was significantly harder.  As the 18 footer classed developed it was still considered a skiff as in principle it still fitted the basic description.  However over time perception changed from an 18 being a skiff to a skiff being an 18 and so people's understaning of the term changed.  The result being that the definition has become somewhat blurred.  Without wanting to sound too nerdy this actually gives an interesting view of how the english language has developed.  On a more important sailing related note, (and this will proobably not help matter to much) It appears that there are now too different schools of thought on the mater.  the 'classic' australian view which pretty much resticts the term to the 18's, 16's, I14, and 12's.  The other view is the european (british) one which expands this too light asymmetric boats designed to plane on all points of sail.  This is born more out of marketing than design and so some sinecism could be associiated with it, but (back to words again) provided we all know more or less what eachother are talking about, doews it really matter?!

P.S.:   Those in Oz please fell free to correct me on the 18's history, I've read the stuff on the web but thats no substitute for seeing them devlop first hand. 

I'm sure that we don't need to go down this thread again.

If the blokes in the northern hemisphere think back twenty or so years, what was their deffition of a skiff was, I bet most people will think of an 18'. if so then the correct term is to be applied to 6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,24ft skiffs and the only one still sailing are 10 (historical) 12,14(now I14), 16, 18. Unfortunatally SOME MARKETING people use the word skiff to SELL boats.

Some background for the rest: The ICA has registered some domain names for the Contender website and want to get some stickers made up withthe web address on them, the poll is to decide which to get printed. The choices are 1, http://www.contenderclass.org - www.contenderclass.org 2, http://www.contenderskiff.org - www.contenderskiff.org or 3, some of both. So far it's 73% 19%, 8% respectively.

It seems most Contenderers agree that a Contender is not a Skiff but worryingly some committee members seem to disagree - which is why I launched this thread to convince them otherwise.