Nippa (dinghy)

Nippa Sailing Dinghy

The Nippa Dinghy after many years in storage in Santa Cruz, California. This boat is believed to be the first Nippa exported to the US.
Designer	Iain Murray, Murray Burns & Andy Dovell
Location	Sydney, Australia
Year	2004
Design	Sails: North Sails Australia;
Crew	Double or Single Handed
Trapeze	No
Construction	Sydney Yachts; Hull: Vacuum Molded E-Glass, PVC Foam Core; Spars: Carbon Filament Wound and Spun Tapered; Centerboard: Plastic Injection Moulded; Rudder: Plastic Injection Moulded, Alloy Casting Rudder Frame;
Hull weight	25 kg (55 lb)
LOA	2.65 m (8 ft 8 in)
Beam	1.38 m (4 ft 6 in)
Mast Length	4.12 m (13.5 ft)
Total sail area	6 m2 (65 sq ft)

The Nippa is a small Australian dinghy designed by Iain Murray in 2004. The Nippa dinghy was designed for young sailors between five and fourteen years of age, or a young sailor and instructor. It's open back design was to provide easy movement as well as a self-bailing feature.

The company now appears to be defunct.

When Iain and his wife Alex Murray began encouraging their children to sail, they found the resources at their sailing club unfit for a successful learning experience. Many students were exhausted and frustrated by constant capsize recovery and bailing of the old, heavy, often-damaged, and unexciting dinghy fleet they were taught in. Looking for a better design, they set out to "provide children with limited or no sailing experience an enjoyable boat that would deliver great performance, be easy to maintain, simple to store as well as being safe and robust and 'looked cool' too."

Iain teamed up with Andy Dovell of Murray Burns and Dovell Yacht Designers, Michael Coxon of North Sails Australia, and renowned yachtsman Rob Brown to 'design and build an affordable, modern, safe, innovative, durable, simple and fun one design training class for children'.

They developed and launched a prototype which they tested in a variety of conditions, frequently updating and balancing and ultimately arrived at the Nippa design. Nippa began selling in 2004 under the Azzura Marine Group. Touting the simple to rig and simple to sail dinghy for five to fourteen year olds. They marketed it to sailing clubs as buoyant, stable and exciting with hull features that complemented bumpy water and great for developing a training fleet.

Ian donated 10 Nippas to the Avalon Sailing Club in 2004 to encourage use.

The first Nippa to arrive in the United States was sailed out of Santa Cruz, California by Philippe Kahn's Pegasus Racing Team Sailing Manager, Anthony Young.

Nippa noted that "As demand grows the Nippa Class Association will be rolled out." however, it is not obvious at this time if the class association was established or not.

As of 2006, Nippas had been sold locally in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia and internationally in South Africa, the United States and England.