The Lightning is an American sailing dinghy that was designed by Olin Stephens of

Sparkman & Stephens Sparkman & Stephens is a naval architecture and yacht brokerage firm with offices in Newport, Rhode Island and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. The firm performs design and engineering of new and existing vessels for pleasure, commercial, and milita ...

, as a one-design racer and first built in 1938.Sherwood, Richard M.: ''A Field Guide to Sailboats of North America, Second Edition'', pages 102-103.

Houghton Mifflin Company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Boston Financ ...

, 1994. An accepted World Sailing class, the boat is one of the most popular one-design sailing classes in the United States and is also raced in several other countries. The design was developed into a smaller boat, as a trainer for the Lightning, the

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in 1947.

Production

The design has been built by a large number of manufacturers in the United States and also in Canada. There have been 15,550 boats completed and it remains in production by the Allen Boat Company. In the past it has been built in the US by the Clark Boat Company, Lippincott Boat Works, Nickels Boat Works, Jack A. Helms Co.,

Lockley Newport Boats Lockley Newport Boats was an American boat builder based in Newport Beach, California. The company specialized in the design and manufacture of fiberglass sailboats.Henkel, Steve: ''The Sailor's Book of Small Cruising Sailboats'', pages 172 & ...

, Skaneateles Boat & Canoe, Mobjack Manufacturing, Siddons & Sindle, Loftland Sail-craft, the Eichenlaub Boat Co and

WindRider LLC WindRider LLC is a United States manufacturer of sailing dinghy and trimaran sailboats. As of late 2020 production of boats by WindRider LLC has ceased. The company now sells outdoor gear through their online store. Note that WindRider was the ...

. It was also built in Canada by J.J. Taylor and Sons Ltd. Boats have been delivered complete, sold as kits for amateur construction and also amateur-built from plans.

Design

Lightning dinghy on Lake Wallenpaupack, Pennsylvania

The Lightning is a recreational sailboat, initially built with wooden plank construction and, since the early 1960s, of fiberglass with wood trim. It has a fractional

sloop A sloop is a sailboat with a single mast typically having only one headsail in front of the mast and one mainsail aft of (behind) the mast. Such an arrangement is called a fore-and-aft rig, and can be rigged as a Bermuda rig with triangular sa ...

rig with wooden or aluminum spars. The rig employs a backstay, anchored off center, so as to not impede the tiller. If equipped with a wooden mast it has a jumper stay from the mast head to the spreaders. The hull has a foredeck, with a "V" shaped coaming, a raked stem, an angled

transom Transom may refer to: * Transom (architecture), a bar of wood or stone across the top of a door or window, or the window above such a bar * Transom (nautical), that part of the stern of a vessel where the two sides of its hull meet * Operation Tran ...

, a transom-hung rudder controlled by a tiller and a retractable

centerboard A centreboard or centerboard (US) is a retractable hull appendage which pivots out of a slot in the hull of a sailboat, known as a ''centreboard trunk'' (UK) or ''centerboard case'' (US). The retractability allows the centreboard to be raised t ...

. It displaces and carries a class-prescribed maximum of in centerboard weight. The boat has a draft of with the centerboard extended and with it retracted, allowing beaching or ground transportation on a trailer. For sailing the design is equipped with a

spinnaker A spinnaker is a sail designed specifically for sailing off the wind on courses between a reach (wind at 90° to the course) to downwind (course in the same direction as the wind). Spinnakers are constructed of lightweight fabric, usually n ...

. Mainsail and jib windows are optional for improved visibility and safety. The design has a Portsmouth Yardstick racing average handicap of 88.4 and is normally raced with a crew of three sailors, although it can accommodate six adults.Lightning Class Association
Yearbook 1941
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Operational history

The boat has an active class club that regulates the design and organizes races, the ''International Lightning Class Association''. By 1994 there were more than 460 racing fleets in Canada, Europe, South America and the United States. In a 1994 review Richard Sherwood noted that the design has good freeboard and stability.

Racing

References