The Thistle, designed in the 1940s by Gordon "Sandy" Douglass (see also Highlander and Flying Scot), is a seventeen-foot dinghy that is popular throughout the U.S. A crew of two or three sails the Thistle with main, jib, and symmetrical spinnaker. A trapeze is not permitted for racing, but there is wide variability in how the boats are rigged. The boat is raced under strict one-design rules, allowing older wooden hulls to compete on a level basis with fiberglass hulls, which have been built since the 1950s. (Thistle number 1 was the winning boat at the 1990 nationals.) The hull is wide and flat, enabling offwind planing in 15-20 knot winds. More than four thousand boats have been built since the Thistle's inception. This class is the Portsmouth yardstick's baseline for ranking small boats in handicap racing. For more information, read the Thistle wikipedia article.
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