Single-handed sailing dinghy H15

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This was Hartley Boats hardest decision, would a similar sized boat to the Wayfarer affect the long-term sustainability of the Wayfarer’s future? After many discussions we decided to go ahead with this 15.5ft (4.7m) rotor-moulded boat and in fact, we decided to look at its competitors first. The Wayfarer, the number one training boat found throughout the Country and shipped all over the world, together with the other rotor-moulded successful training boats. We had the test results from the Wayfarer but needed to test and sail other rotor training boats to find out their strengths and weaknesses. After several months of testing we had our list of strengths and three difficult problems we needed to overcome. Having talked to many sailing schools, their general opinion was that when the boat was capsized the centreboard was too high making it difficult to right the boat in big winds, the shrouds flex and then load the genoa with far too much power, making it very difficult to control. Finally, a large rotor-moulded boat with large flat surfaces after several years of work, numerous cracks appeared These problems had to be thought through and solved, plus, we would take all the benefits from the number one training dinghy, the Wayfarer, with over 11,000 sailing and if we could find the team to design and incorporate all our requirements into this new H15 rotor-moulded boat, we would have a winner We found Glen Trustwell and Naval Architect Dan Holman who had worked on the Bahia and who were specialists in rotor boats. We produced for the H15 a requirement and benefits list taken from the Wayfarer Trainer and if we achieved the list, the H15 would become a world leader