by Richard Crockett
Today I feature the Andy Dinghy, one few modern sailors will remember, although sailors of yore may have good memories of.
I have chosen this dinghy today as for some time now I have had the Andy Handbook hanging around my office – too big to file in a modern-day filing system as it is printed on “foolscap” paper (remember that?), and also because I came across the Andy file in my archives. So the moons aligned to create this.
The Andy was designed by Frank Spears, a legendary Cape Town sailor and the designer of the Spearhead, who said that the Andy design was born as a result of a letter which he received from Mr. Aris Blacquiere, Commodore of St. Andrew’s College Sailing Club in Grahamstown.
He first wrote to Spears stating the following:
“We have been sailing a fleet of 13 Billy-Ohs and a few Sprogs, a Winger, a Finn and a Sharpie for the past year, and we are in the doldrums; we have the Billy-Oh as our one-design class, but have come to realize that she is a tremendously good junior trainer, but very little fun for the more advanced members. Now we are naturally looking farther afield for a more suitable senior class. Our waters are rather limited.
“The Sprogs perform well, but do not quite seem to be our ideal design. We had hoped to find a suitable 12-footer which would serve as both a trainer and a good racing craft – but so far we have had little success.
“The way I see it, we want something along these lines: A light hull with fairly spacious cockpit, but with ample buoyancy fore and aft; standard type rigging, with a good bit of sail (main and fore), fair stability, though not too much at the cost of performance, and something that will keep both skipper and crew nippy. In other words, an ideal 12- footer”.
A glance at the lines will show that she is very easily driven and quite stable when the crew is aboard. She is designed to be built of moulded plywood as Spears was informed by Mr. Blacquiere that they would build a mould in their own school workshop and thus be able to turn out a number of identical hulls very cheaply. She has been designed for a crew weight approximately 300 to 320 lb. and although she has quite firm bilges, the water lines are sweet and she should leave a very clean wake. She should plane in a very light breeze.
So there she is in a nutshell.
To avoid regurgitating too many words, besides the photos I have included several articles about the boat. Enjoy.
READ ABOUT THE ANDY HERE: Andy – about the Andy – 003303 – OCR
READ THE ANDY CLASS PROMO BROCHURE HERE: Andy Class Promotion – 1978 11 02 – 003293 – OCR
READ THE ANDY HANDBOOK HERE: Andy Handbook – 003304 – OCR
READ NEWSLETTER 01 HERE: Andy – newsletter 01 – 003297
READ NEWSLETTER 02 HERE: Andy – newsletter 02 – 003298
READ NEWSLETTER 03 HERE: Andy – newsletter 03 – 003299