The L Boat is a type of

sail A sail is a tensile structure—which is made from fabric or other membrane materials—that uses wind power to propel sailing craft, including sailing ships, sailboats, windsurfers, ice boats, and even sail-powered land vehicles. Sails may ...

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

racing boat designed by the Luedtke Brothers in Toledo, Ohio in May, 1931. The boats were of wood construction with low freeboard. Most of the hulls were mahogany, but a few were redwood and cedar. They were long, 7¹/₂ foot beam, and 3¹/₂ foot draft. They also had an iron

centerboard A centreboard or centerboard (US) is a retractable hull appendage which pivots out of a slot in the hull of a sailboat, known as a ''centreboard trunk'' (UK) or ''centerboard case'' (US). The retractability allows the centreboard to be raised t ...

that could be lowered to increase the draft to six feet and assist in upwind sailing. They had a very large mainsail with relatively small headsails and a 3/4s rig. The tall mast was

sitka spruce ''Picea sitchensis'', the Sitka spruce, is a large, coniferous, evergreen tree growing to almost tall, with a trunk diameter at breast height that can exceed 5 m (16 ft). It is by far the largest species of spruce and the fifth-larg ...

with stainless rigging. The first 40 were built by Luedtke; Remi DeBlaere built the last 11. The last hulls were #50 and #51. They were raced One-Design in Detroit from the 1930s thru the 1960s until the class fell apart in 1968 due to the rise of fiberglass in ship construction. The ''Sally K'' (Hull #30) is the last remaining L Boat in Detroit. Her hull is redwood. She is docked at the Windmill Pointe Park marina where the Detroit River meets

Lake St. Clair Lake St. Clair (french: Lac Sainte-Claire) is a freshwater lake that lies between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Michigan. It was named in 1679 by French Catholic explorers after Saint Clare of Assisi, on whose feast day ...

. The L Boats mostly raced out of The Bayview Yacht Club and the Detroit Yacht Club in the Detroit area, but also raced in Lake Erie.

References

Bayview Yacht Club

Detroit Regional Yacht-Racing Association
Ship types {{ship-type-stubThe ‘Sally K’ was sold and is now in North Royalton, Ohio. It will sail out of Cleveland in the future.

See also

References