OD-OY Review: The Peanut Dinghy

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Update, March 12, 2020. Class reforming. From Jeff Moses:

"I was just able to obtain 2 Peanuts from The Augusta Sailing Club! I will be taking lines off these boats and restoring both of them. I will be offering plans, kits and complete boats to new members. We will be hosting a National Championship in 2021. You can reach me at the US Peanut Class Association, Jeff Moses, President, 490 N. Stewart St., North Liberty, Iowa 52317. Jmoses9967 (with our good friends over here at) gmail.com and 319 530 9967."

December 2020 - Jeff is going to set up a Facebook Group. More details to come.

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Ah! Memories of teenage lust ..... for a boat.

Around the age of 12, I learned to sail on an El Toro and shortly after, started to learn to race as a crew on an International 14. I became obsessed with sailing and, sometime in the 1960's, when the annual class review of the One-Design and Offshore Yachtsman came out, I spied this blurb on the Peanut class and fell in love.

Slightly longer than my El Toro and much racier, I dreamed of owning this beauty. I sent away to the class secretary and got one or two mimeographed sheets with some grainy photos in the return post. I could have bought some plans but, I was, at that time, inept with the basic hand tools and my dad wasn't much better. The money I saved from my lawn cutting jobs was to be used for other purposes.

When I was in my twenties, in a short foray in the Finn dinghy, I sailed a regatta out of Sayville, New York, just up the road from the Peanut Class home port of West Islip. My teenage obsession had long passed and I never thought of making a quick 10 mile (16km) side-trip to see if I could find a Peanut dinghy in the flesh.

In the ensuing years, despite inquiries to any Long Island sailor who has crossed my path, not one person has come forward as knowing anything of the the Peanut dinghy of West Islip, let alone have I been able to find a person who has seen one. It seems to be a class that appeared and disappeared very quickly, leaving not much trace.

But it still remains, to me, as one of those warm, fuzzy memories of early teenage years

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Addendum January 2019: An ad for a fiberglass Peanut from Yacht Racing, February 1972.

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Addendum January 2020: In an email, Jeff Moses adds to the history of the Peanut dinghy.

"Arnold R. JOHNSON and his wife Lydia lived in Westo (revive the t!) Islip. She was the class secretary. Plans were $8.50. Fleets raced in the Nationals at West Islip YC and Babylon YC. Arnold worked at Grumman as an engineer. We had a fleet here in Iowa. Bernie Kuse, a professor at ISU in Ames, built several. I owned two. Fleets were in Florida also. Several hundred boats were built.

Jeff is looking for plans for the Peanut. If you know of the whereabouts of such plans, leave a comment.

Jeff also sent along photos of a Peanut that was in a Long Island Museum. I didn't realize the Peanut was a double bottom dinghy. (It wasn't, at least initially... The original design was a single bottom hull.)

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Addendum December 2020: Phil Johnson, son of Arnold Johnson, contacted me and supplied more history of the Peanut class, including photos and the background of his father. A fascinating man. (More of that later.) Phil's recollections of the Peanut:

"My memories of the Peanut were that it was versatile but you needed time to understand how your weight placement in the boat affected its performance. Once you became ‘one’ with the boat (and learned how to hike out properly on the rail), it wanted to go fast but you always had to be prepared for that sudden gust that would tip you over. It could beat the crap out of anything upwind and was pretty easy to get up on a plane while reaching. We raced against a lot of Sunfish/Sailfish back then and we would fall behind on downwind legs and always catch them upwind. They were a lot of fun to race as a class! As a trainer, my dad used the ‘Junior’ rig and a weighted centerboard for stability – as I said, versatile."

Here are two photos of the West Islip fleet back in the Peanut's heyday.

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Update December 12, 2020: In a comment I moved over to the main post, Roger Errington adds more to the history of the Peanut Class.

"I learned to sail on [a Peanut] as a kid... My dad got the plans and built a Peanut for me. Must have been the mid 60s. I raced it out of the Otsego Sailing Club on Lake Otsego in upstate New York. Also sailed in the National Championships a couple of times in West Islip. So we knew the designer, Arnold Johnson, pretty well. The Johnsons left Long Island and moved to New Hampshire at some point. I remember some of the other sailors - Lou Jones and Axel Paulsen - believe they were TWA pilots and friends of the Johnsons. My boat has been sitting in a friend's barn in Massachusetts for years. It was a great boat to learn how to sail in. Pretty tender. You had to stay on your toes in gusty conditions or it was easily capsized. One comment about some of the photos: the boat didn't initially have a double bottom. It was a good addition given how wet the boat was and how often it went over."

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Ed. Note: There is also a Norwegian Peanut sailing dink which was hot-molded and imported into the U.S during the 1960's - another instance of a class sharing a name.