Two Over the Hill Dinghy Sailors in Brown Floppy Hats (Vanguard Nomad)

Good friend and Naval Architect, Bob Ames, wanted some video of his Nomad daysailor....sadly no longer in production, having been dropped when British management took over Vanguard Sailboats in Rhode Island. So he recruited two of his ex-International 14 buddies (me and Sean Smith) to sail the Nomad off of Rhode River while he bounced around in his small inflatable with his Canon Movie Camera. It's been a long time since I sailed a dinghy with a spinnaker. Luckily the Nomad had enough stability to tolerate my mistakes, including parking the Nomad beam to the wind during a takedown with the spinnaker full and bye down to leeward.

To my mind, the Nomad is a higher performance take on the Flying Scot daysailor, with an up to date hull shape, assymetric spinnaker, and North 3DL sails. There are no hiking straps; a little disconcerting to Sean who almost fell out of the boat the first time he got up on the gunwhales. The Nomad was quite lively in the 5-10 Southerly breeze we had that day. I can see it appealing to a family where the parents were raised on Lasers and like planing dinghies, but now need something with room for the toddlers.

Laser Performance is sitting on the Nomad molds with no intention to resume production as, in their marketing plan, the Nomad conflicts with the British designed sailboat line up that they now import into the U.S.

Shame.......

In the following video, I'm the one with the life jacket (something about singlehanded sailors, we are trained to wear lifejackets on the water). Bob Ames did a bang up job on editing this clip.