Eaton/Clarke on Canaan Win 2010 Little America's Cup
NEWPORT, RI, August 28, 2010 -- If wing technology didn’t have everyone’s attention after BMW Oracle Racing’s victorious 33rd America’s Cup, it definitely does now. The high speeds and almost instant acceleration of cambered foils had members of America’s Cup syndicates, top designers, and all sailors in awe.  Canadian C Class Catamaran Team of Fred Eaton, Magnus Clarke, Steve Killing, Rob Paterson, and Rossi Milev have been along for the entire ride, one way or another. Clarke, Paterson, and Milev took six months off from their C Class program to manage wing protection for the largest wingmast ever built for a race-boat: BMW Oracle’s (223 foot) 68 metre-tall wing. Reunited in March, their team brought four wings to the International C Class Catamaran Championship hosted by New York Yacht Club on Narragansett Bay this past week. “Upwind the camber is moderate, but downwind with the flap set at 40 degrees, the wing will produce almost double the force of an equal area soft sail,” explains Killing. Eaton and Clarke raced Killing’s latest design, Canaan, to a thrilling victory today in the final day of match racing. 


dagger board is important is that these small are used mostly for racing, and you want the maximum performance you can get. If you are just going out for a sail in a small sailboat, leave the centerboard fully down except when you come back to the beach, or of course if you run aground.

Small are a lo to fun to sail, cost little, are robust, and as they are kept out of the water require very little maintenance. The Lasers, Streakers and Europa are among those that have 'cat' rigs – just one sail, like a mainsail on a normal Bermudian rig. They can still sail very fast, and can be sailed easily single-handed. They are used for single-handed racing.

Most other small have a Bermudian rig, usually with a small jib and fairly large mainsail. The exception is the Mirror Dinghy which has a gunter rig – the mainsail is hoisted up the mast and a spar that goes almost vertically from the top of the mast. The shape of the sails is almost the same as the Bermudian, but this rig was chosen because the mast is shorter making the boat easier to store at home and transport to the water.



Small come is all sizes, shapes and weights. Some are built with a gaff rig, some with the gunter rig, some with cat rigs, and most with Bermudian rigs – there are even some with two masts, each with a cat rig.

The great thing about small sailboat is that you can take it from the boat store or from your home to the shore easily and launch it single handed. This hardly takes any time – and then you are sailing. Mostly, small are used for racing, or for short cruises of a couple of hours, but some people have cruised across oceans in modified small like the Waverley and Drascombe.

So i f you want to get a sailboat and have limited funds – or no experience – I recommend you buy a small sailboat.

John Hartley has been sailing for over 20 years, and has owned three sailboats – one small one and two cruising yachts, and gives helpful information about sailboats and yachts at http://www.sailboatsyachts.com. He is the joint author of “The Leisurely Route to the Med”, and has written over a dozen other books.