Windsong

Windsong is a unique, hand-crafted sailing dinghy that blends traditional craftsmanship with high-performance design. Its powerful lug rig and lightweight hull create a fast, responsive and deeply rewarding sailing experience.

Built at Burnham Overy Staithe, water that defeats most boats: a narrow tidal creek, mud banks either side, a hard tide running. You need almost no draught to get out, and power enough to work to windward across a sandbank on a lee shore.

It's desinger John Owles had fifty years at sea and a new idea. The lug rig, written off as a workboat relic, needed a new hull. Windsong is cedar strip under epoxy and glass, with carbon spars and a double-layer bottom. She planed on her second sail. Force 5 off the Norfolk coast, twelve knots, both crew sitting flat without toe straps. She’s done sixteen since.

Five inches of draught lands her on any beach in the world; the rig converts to cat in minutes for single handed sailing, and she takes 5 minutes to rig up or down.

She is, as Classic Boat put it, possibly the coolest wooden boat ever built.