The Thistle is an American planing sailing dinghy that was designed by Sandy Douglass as a one-design racer and first built in 1945.Sherwood, Richard M.: ''A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Second Edition'', pages 84-85.

Houghton Mifflin Company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Boston Financ ...

, 1994.

Production

The design was originally built by Douglass & McLeod in the United States, but the company went out of business in 1971. Since then production has passed to several American builders, including the

Clark Boat Company The Clark Boat Company was an American boat builder based in Kent, Washington. The company specialized in the design and manufacture of fiberglass sailboats. The company was founded by Bob Clark in 1960 and continued in business until 1984. H ...

W. D. Schock Corp The W. D. Schock Corporation (usually styled W. D. Schock Corp) is an American boat builder originally based in Newport Beach, California, later in Corona, California and currently located in Santa Ana, California. The company was founded by W ...

, Northwest One Design and the current builder since 1975, Great Midwest Yacht Company. More than 4,000 boats of this design have been completed. W. D. Schock Corp records indicate that they built 250 boats between 1959 and 1975.

Design

The Thistle is a recreational sailboat, with the earlier production models made from molded

plywood Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...

and the more recent models built predominantly of fiberglass, with wood structural members and trim. The seats are a fiberglass-sandwich construction, and provide built-in flotation. It has a fractional

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 ...

rig with aluminum spars and three spreader bars. The hull has no decks, a plumb stem and

transom Transom may refer to: * Transom (architecture), a bar of wood or stone across the top of a door or window, or the window above such a bar * Transom (nautical), that part of the stern of a vessel where the two sides of its hull meet * Operation Tran ...

, a transom-hung rudder controlled by a tiller and a retractable, drum-mounted

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 ...

. It displaces . The boat has a draft of with the centerboard extended and with it retracted, allowing beaching or ground transportation on a trailer. For sailing the design is equipped with symmetrical

spinnaker A spinnaker is a sail designed specifically for sailing off the wind on courses between a reach (wind at 90° to the course) to downwind (course in the same direction as the wind). Spinnakers are constructed of lightweight fabric, usually n ...

of and built-in flotation. The design has a Portsmouth Yardstick racing average handicap of 83.0 and is normally raced with a crew of three sailors, although it has a capacity of six people.

Operational history

By 1994 the design was being raced in more than 150 fleets. In a 1994 review Richard Sherwood wrote, "the Thistle was influenced by English dinghy design and is similar to the International 14, another racing dinghy with a plumb bow and flat run. Originally, boats were of molded wood. Racing crew is three, but the Thistle will carry six. She will fit into a garage. The Thistle has a lot of sail and a lot of speed. Class rules are strict. Gear that may be technically legal but provides an advantage is not allowed ... The Thistle is the boat used as the primary yardstick for Portsmouth Numbers."

Racing

References

External links