organized the firm of Alcort, Inc. (P. O. Box 1345, Waterbury, Conn.), 

 and sold their boats under the trade-mark name of Sailfish. Later, they 

 added two Super Sailfishes and a Sunfish. As the idea spread rapidly, other 

 builders got into the act with boats under other names, some incorrectly 

 called Sailfish by the public— no more correct, as Bill Robinson has pointed 

 out,* than calling all sedans Fords. D. Bruce Connolly of Alcort is Secre- 

 tary of the Sailfish-Sunfish class. 



As a great many boardboats are homemade or built from kits which 

 may or may not result in boats, no one knows how many there are. Alcort 

 was reported to have sold 14,000 Sailfish or Sunfish by the end of 1959 

 and they say that the number in the world now is 25,000. It should be 

 clear, therefore, that when we discuss in this book the number of boats 

 in the various sailboat classes and explain that the Snipes, for example, are 

 the largest class in the world, we are not including Sailfish, Sunfish, or any 

 other class of boardboats. 



In this section we are confining ourselves to the best-known, the Alcort 

 Sailfish and Sunfish, though there are others in this growing market. 



The Sailfish and the larger Super Sailfishes and the Sunfish all have lateen 

 sails. Bathing suits are the accepted costumes for these wet but "self -bail- 

 ing" boardboats, and youth is a considerable asset. "Paradoxically," Bill 

 Robinson says, "despite their propensity for dumping people in the water 

 and getting them wet even when they don't capsize, boardboats tend to 

 inspire confidence in the neophyte, and they make an excellent trainer in 

 the basics of handling a boat under sail. 



"A novice gets aboard one already prepared to get wet and to get 

 dumped, and there is no more fear about capsizing in one than in falling 

 off a rubber mat in a pool"— provided the boat doesn't get carried out to 

 sea, and provided the air and water aren't too cold. "One fanatic on the 

 Shrewsbury [River] sails a Sailfish all winter clad in a skin-diver suit, but 

 he has not, as yet, developed any following cult." 



The boardboats accelerate rapidly and when they get planing it takes 

 considerable agility to manage them. The smaller Sailfish usually takes a 

 crew of one, but the larger Mark II or Sunfish often take two or three. These 

 larger boats have shallow foot wells in place of cockpits. In the Sailfish the 

 "cockpit" may be a nonskid painted area. 



' "Boardboat Jamboree," by William W^. Robinson, Yachting, December 1959. 

 174 THE SAILBOAT CLASSES OF NORTH AMERICA 



