Never mind. :)

I know you're not a big fan of the daysailers but I wonder if they are any indicator of the future of sailing? For that matter, what effect does boat designs have on sailing? Or is it the other way around?

Morris is not a big builder but they're in the news these days, mostly with their new daysailing designed sailboats. So here's some of what I see,....

Just as the daysailer idea hit the market just a few years ago, the industry was giving it's final death rattle. The Hinckley picnic boat was still in the news.

Going back just a few years, Morris was into building the big cruising boats, they had become quite sophisticated with systems and big spaces for long term living and cruising. This was the end of a long trend for Morris, a trend that it looks like the economy halted? Hmmm, I'm not so sure.

Go back a little further, and Morris was building their 36' Justine, a popular boat if high end and expensive new (they all are expensive new). That design endured for many years I think and is still popular as a used boat.

The Justine was a moderate design, a good all around sailer, and could then be seen as a coastal sailing boat for a family, for a weekend, a week, and is still used that way today.

It could also go around the world but that's not where most of them are today. They're on the east coast mostly, doing what boats have done for a century and more in smaller less complex boats.

Going back further, before the production builders began to grow the family boat in size and complexity toward a seagoing dwelling, they still turned out some good boats that were mostly used, as they are today, for coastal sailing not far from home. Still, many went off farther of course, but not the majority.

That's far enough back, today, in one of the worst economic climates we've seen, especially for boat builders, Morris is just starting hull #60 of their M36. I think they built 30 some Justines in as many or more years of that boats run back in the "hayday" as it looks now.

Morris is too small to run a huge marketing campaign so it's unlikely they created this idea, not entirely anyway. I remember the early advertising and of course, it was about, "sailing for an hour, or a weekend,..." that sort of thing. Quite a departure from the behoumouths dubbed "Globegirdlers" just a few years before.

What's interesting to me is, did they see this trend or was it also luck?

Will it endure? I think so. I think it never really left us. Old boats like the one posted with the wide decks, have always had a following. They're still pretty good at some of what the daysailers do, they're not too huge nor complex and most do what they've been doing since they were built decades ago, coastal sailing.

And most have decks because they were designed for sailing first, from the inside out. They're not very good homes though.

Lastly, when Morris and Sparkman and Stevens got together, and Tom and Cuyler said, "We want this designed from the inside out for sailing, it doesn't need alot of berths or space below," I bet the grins in the design room were ear to ear.