Nic Compton
The 15′ dinghy RÆDWALD achieves high performance under a traditional gaff rig. Here she displays her maximum sail area, which includes the jib of a Wayfarer dinghy and the 300-sq-ft spinnaker of a B14 dinghy.
Thirteen point nine knots. That’s the top speed Sam Doman has so far recorded on his newly launched 15′ dinghy, RÆDWALD. It’s surely some kind of record for a gaff-rigged dinghy, if you exclude Australia’s 18′ Sydney Harbour skiffs, which regularly clock speeds of 15 knots and more. Even the gaff-rigged sandbaggers of New York, with their huge sail areas, only occasionally reached that speed, and they can hardly be described as dinghies.
“When I built the boat, I wanted to be able to do 15 knots,” Sam says. “My unofficial target was to be the fastest gaff-rigged boat built outside Australia.” While he reckons that the Sydney Harbour skiffs are “pretty untouchable,” he aspires to “beat the round-Britain record for an open boat, which at the moment is 15 days. That’s an average speed of just over 3 knots. It’s quick, but I think it’s not unbeatable.”