Does anybody know this (kind of) skiff?

 

Found on http://www.fricke-dannhus.de/item/skiff-segeljolle-1201-1.html

 

Built 2006

Length 4,95 m

Width 1,86 m

Weight 120 kg

Sail area 14,7 sqm

Small kite 20 sqm

Big kite 24 sqm

 

Thanks!

 

Fair call, but this boat is a metre too short, about 40kg(?) too heavy, about two feet too fat, has the wrong rocker, wrong flare and an assy.

 

The fact that this boat can reasonably be mistaken for a Sharpie, though, indicates how far it is from being a "real" "skiff-as-we-know-it".  The Lightweight Sharpie is the antithesis of the traditional Aussie skiff in many ways and yet it's more popular, much more widespread, and arguably much more representative of what could be called the mainstream of Australian dinghy design, which is centred around light boats with small rigs.  To me that was always a strong indication that much of the '90s "skiff fad" was little more than marketing spin - if skiffs cannot dominate in the warm and windy waters of Oz, why would they dominate anywhere else?

 

One of the reasons I dislike sticking the S-word onto half the boats afloat is that it ignores the enormously important influence of the lightweight development dinghy classes on modern dinghy and skiff design. Most of what we call "skiff" elements of design actually came from development dinghy classes with restricted sail area.  Perhaps more importantly, the way the term is used creates the impression that there is only one stream of high performance design, which is a bummer when that stream is the most expensive and inaccessible one.