INTRODUCTION 



On September 7, 1890, an article appeared in the Boston Globe with an 

 alarming heading: 



"Is Racing Dying Out? Committees Have Hard Work to Fill Classes." 



The article then went on to say that yacht racing had become largely 

 an expensive competition in which only the wealthy could aflPord to engage. 

 Rather than a competition between boats in which sailing skill determined 

 the result, it had become a competition between designers. 



"Considering its great fleet," said the Globe, "the New York Yacht Club 

 has been lamentably weak in its racing events this summer and many other 

 clubs have experienced a dearth of yachts on race days. 



"The reason for this state of afi^airs seems to be that racing is being 

 reduced to a scientific basis and the old boats are being rapidly outbuilt. 

 Few of our yacht owners can order a new boat every year, so the advent 

 of a new flyer gradually thins out the ranks of her class." 



At the time that article was written only a single one-design class had 

 appeared on the American yachting scene and that class was located at a 

 small port far away from the main centers of yachting. While there may 

 have been other attempts at establishing one-design classes in other isolated 

 areas, there is httle doubt that the North Haven dinghies (which began 

 sailing in 1887) represent the oldest one-design class in the nation— at least 

 the oldest in continuous existence and still racing. As indicated in the 

 section on these dinghies, this was vouched for by the editors of Yachting 

 after considerable research. So far as the great yachting areas of Long 

 Island Sound and Massachusetts Bay were concerned, one-design classes 

 had not yet appeared. 



The first of the other one-design classes arrived a year after the Globe 

 article burst into print and four years after the North Haven dinghies had 

 begun racing on the waters of Fox Island Thorofare. In 1891 four small 

 catboats were built by the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club of Oyster 

 Bay, Long Island, long a leader in yachting progress since its founding in 

 1871. Each boat was painted a different color and given a number instead 

 of a name. In 1895 and 1896, two larger one-design classes, both designed 

 by Nathanael Herreshoff, took to the water: five 21-foot-waterline fin-keel 



INTRODUCTION I3 



