How the boats changed: fiberglass, Dacron, wings and foils.

Fiberglass hulls

In 1938 Russell Games Slayter of Owens-Corning filed a US patent (No. 2,123,992) for glass fibers reinforced with plastic resin, Practical Sailor records. When the first fiberglass boat appeared is disputed. Practical Sailor credits Ohio boatbuilder Ray Greene with an experimental hull in 1942, though that rests on this one trade source. Wikipedia says the first fiberglass boats were made in the 1930s, with practical production beginning in the 1950s.

Practical Sailor describes the mid-1950s Pearson Triton as one of the first mass-produced fiberglass sailboats and says fiberglass had overtaken wood by the late 1950s. Wikipedia adds that by the early 1960s building had moved from one-off construction to production lines, putting boats within reach of ordinary sailors. Both sources also link higher resin prices after the 1973 oil embargo, and lighter, cheaper laminates in the late 1970s, to weaker boats and widespread osmotic blistering.

Dacron sails

DuPont's polyester fiber was sold as Dacron in the United States and Terylene in Britain. The Hagley Museum dates its consumer debut to 8 May 1951, in men's suits, and DuPont opened a production plant at Kinston, North Carolina, in 1953. Sailmaker Elvström says Dacron sailcloth came into use in the 1950s and was lighter and more durable than cotton, and less prone to stretching and rot. Soundings credits Ted Hood of Marblehead, Massachusetts, with developing a superior Dacron cloth in the early 1950s that made him sailmaker to leading New York Yacht Club racers; by the 1980s Hood Sails was described as the world's largest sailmaker.

Elvström notes that high-performance racing sails have since moved largely to laminates of carbon fiber and aramid, while woven Dacron remains standard for cruising. Our sails page covers today's materials.

Wing sails

Invention and Technology traces the rigid wing's ancestry to Anton Flettner's rotor ship Baden-Baden, which used two spinning cylinders and crossed the Atlantic in 1926 before the idea was dropped as inefficient. In the 1970s Tom Sweeney's team at Princeton developed a semi-rigid sail-wing, and semi-rigid wings appeared on small boats in the late 1970s and 1980s.

The first wing in an America's Cup match flew on the catamaran Stars & Stripes in 1988. It returned on the trimaran USA-17 in 2010, whose wing was reported at about 223 ft tall, and then on the AC72 catamarans of 2013 and the AC50s of 2017. The full Cup story is on our America's Cup history page.

Hydrofoils

Yachting World's history of the hydrofoil starts with powered boats: Enrico Forlanini's propeller-driven hydrofoil reached 36.9 knots in 1906, and Alexander Graham Bell and Casey Baldwin's HD-4 reached 52 knots in 1918.

The outright speed records

World Sailing reports that Paul Larsen set the WSSRC outright 500 m sailing speed record of 65.45 knots in Vestas Sailrocket 2 at Walvis Bay, Namibia, on 24 November 2012. The same month he set the outright nautical-mile record of 55.32 knots, beating the 50.17 knots set in 2009 by l'Hydroptère. In the America's Cup, the press kit gives the top recorded AC75 speed as 55.6 knots, set by INEOS Britannia during the 37th edition.

Dinghy design milestones

Sail-World reports that Bruce Kirby sketched the Laser in October 1969, a prototype was built in April 1970, and the class launched at the New York Boat Show in January 1971, where 144 boats were sold. More than 220,000 have been built. After a trademark dispute with the European builder, the Olympic rigs were renamed ILCA 7 and ILCA 6; our sources give no date for the change.

Britannica credits Paul Elvstrøm with the self-bailer and a racing life jacket, and with popularising hiking: leaning out over the water from the knees. He founded Elvström sails in 1954. See dinghy technique for how hiking is used today.

How Olympic sailing equipment changed

The 1900 Olympic boats raced in tonnage classes with no standard designs (US Sailing).

The name changed too. Wikipedia says Olympic "yachting" became "sailing" in 2000; Topend Sports gives 2000 in its main text and 1996 in its trivia section. A 2012 decision to swap windsurfing for kitesurfing at Rio 2016 was later reversed (Topend Sports). LA 2028 keeps the same 10 events as Paris (Sailing Scuttlebutt). For the current classes, see one-design and Olympic classes and Olympic sailing.