not the weather

The third coast flows both east and west and sweet water sailors are the best.

That does look all very nice but barely big enough for my soap concierge and his accoutrements.

never touch the stuff, just window shopping, no touchy/feely, that can't hurt... just something wooden, hand-crafted, peaceful & quiet, ya know, shellfishfully solitary... just me & my pennywhistle, maybe something like http://beetlecat.com/store/scripts/default.asp OTOH, does one need look any further at anything else? http://www.landandseacollection.com/id694.html

Volvo Ocean Race; http://www.volvooceanrace.com/en/home.html

Those racing yatchs are amazing machines. Seeing one under a full press of sail is really impressive.

Still they ain't a nice simple wood J class...

Do you sail Dwest? I would love to hear about it

Hi christelrice,

I don't sail anymore, I grew up on Lake Winnebago sailing and racing scows. They were mostly wood in the 50s and early 60s. They easily made 20+knots on a good day, still not as fast as the ice boats on the lake. I also sailed larger boats on Lake Michigan out of Sturgeon Bay up on the Door. I sewed sails for years at a local loft while in high school and my first years at college. Then we moved to the desert and switched to small boats, canoes, kayaks, and whitewater dories. We did some racing when we first moved here to the Chesapeake Bay but small boats, and less traveled waters have retained a greater interest than racing and cruising.

We will be sailing out, with some friends, to meet the OpSail 2012 Fleet in a few days. It won't be as big as the year 2000 fleet but if the wind is right it'll still be impressive.

Very cool, so a scow is flat bottomed to make easier navigation through shallow waters. Could you beach it safely then, regardless of it's wood material? How curious! ... a racing scow. is this something that evolved because they are no longer used to transport cargo? I guess what I am thinking about is how crazy it would be to get caught in a nasty storm... Did yours use a centerboard, bilgeboard, or leeboard?

Racing scows are flat because that hull design has a, theoretically, unlimited hull speed. They are great for shallow water with retractable bilge boards, one or two, but they were, and are, a popular sailing design in northern Europe where many of the early Wisconsin settlers originated. Flat hulls are very common in lake or flat water racing worldwide. Sonder boats with fixed fin keels are another good example. There was an active racing fleet on Lake Winnebago starting in the 1860s. They had "A" scows(38 feet) hitting 28+ knots even at that time. The large merchant sailing vessels in the Great Lakes were often narrow, for canals, flat bottomed with large centerboards, unfortunately I don't think a single one survived into modern times. I guess it would be safe to say scows are the most popular sailing hull of all time in America, the Sunfish is essentially a scow hull. Even the wood hulls were beach-able, we just didn't have any, beaches.

Here's a picture of the Oshkosh Yacht Club with some scows, maybe MCs, up on lifts. That could be everybody in the whole city there too.

I saw on the Rachel Maddow show last night that this ship is in New York Harbor. This ship was war treasure from the Nazis.

Yep, missed that.

Mute had managed to make his picture a clicky...

I can't believe the Germans named that boat Horst Wessel, obviously they don't know Wessel is spelt with a "V" not a "W." Doesn't really matter I guess they're all just targets.

I've been giving thought to putting together another boat lately, in fact its a racing scow.
Cheap, and simple. Should work just fine for protected waters.
Puddle Duck Racer

http://pdracer.com/