Sailboat design and manufacturing

This article attempts to give an overview of the design and manufacturing of sailboats and the evolution of this industry. Details should be found and contributed through linked articles.

Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman cultures along with prior cultures and their contemporaries used sails as propulsion for commercial and military vessels. However, pleasure craft evolved along with practical craft. Even today some primitive vessels can outsail modern sailing yachts when running before the wind with their standard sails (no spinnakers etc.)

The term "yacht" is a 17th-century English extraction from the Dutch word Jacht; however, royalty and aristocracy enjoyed traveling on the water from time immemorial, with the earliest documentation being in the Egyptian heyday. There is no documentation that these beneficiaries of the enjoyment were participants in the efforts.

The roots of modern yachting come from British royalty, commencing with Charles II, when Kings and Princes commissioned relatively small pleasure craft in which they competed.

In the time when water-based industries were dominated by sailing-craft, speed was as crucial to success as it is today, perhaps even more so. Getting fish to market or delivering other perishable goods swiftly could make or break a venture. Having a swifter hull or a superior rig could be the strategic advantage that would provide financial success.

Competition between owners of small commercial craft was the driving force in developing upwind sailing technology. Larger craft were less concerned with maneuverability within harbors or in coastal regions where the geography of the land was an impediment to downwind sailing.

Many of the advances in yachting technology came from the fishing industry and local commercial packets. Even pirates contributed to the advances, because small, fast, and highly maneuverable vessels proved successful.

The huge wealth accumulated by the commercial upper-class in the late 19th and early 20th century allowed commoners to enter the realm of yachting previously reserved for royalty and the peerage. Americans as well as Britons began to vie for international acclaim. The yacht America burst in on British egos and created a national rivalry, which has now grown to be the America’s Cup.

Wealthy industrialists such as the Vanderbilts and the Liptons vied with royalty to finance a boom in yachting technology. As the learning curve flattened, less illustrious names were able to finance successful yachts as advance seemed to come from more random successes in design – fine tuning.

World War I dampened the growth in yachting, but the 1920s once again brought a heyday of activity and advancement. The production manufacturing capacity and technology created during the war years catapulted the developments in yachting. However the crash of the international economy at the close of the decade as quickly dampened the demand for large exotic yachts. In order to survive designers and producers had to diversify their efforts and offerings. Once again small commercial craft became the test-beds for technology and the bread-and-butter for the builders in the 1930s. One of the great design teams from this period, Sparkman & Stephens is still influential today.

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Wikipedia