Header Photo: Two Young Gents Righting a Turtled Butterfly Scow

Just getting round to posting about my last header photo. It is of the initial stages of righting a turtled Butterfly scow. This high quality photo was of a series taken by Ryan Young of the Grand Rapids Express. More of his photos of the 2013 Junior Butterfly Nationals can be found by clicking here. (A tip-of-the-hat to reader Marc who pointed me to the current location of the pictures.)

Anyone who races a tippy singlehanded dinghy has been in this situation, standing on a completely overturned hull, yanking on the daggerboard. It is a slow, slow recovery, sometimes ending with you riding the daggerboard underwater and righting the boat again. Turtling is generally not conducive to a high finishing position.

The 12' Butterfly is arguably America's most popular scow with it's greatest numbers found in and around Michigan (though there are fleets in Denver, Colorado and Dallas, Texas). My good friend Len Dolhert, who has raced an assortment of high performance craft, races a Butterly in Denver and says they are "very simple and very tactical". He enjoys racing them.

Master Laser sailor and blogger Doug Peckover was the 2013 Butterfly Singlehanded Champion and, as always, completely dissects the racing in this post.

Butterfly racers seem to span the ages from the very young to the very old and everyone in between. Here is a testimonial YouTube on the Butterfly from some of the Dallas Fleet members.