Windermere 17ft Class Yachts

The 17ft Windermere Class Yachts maintain an active and competitive fleet, racing every Saturday with an average of ten or more yachts on the start line. They also hold three race weeks through the season racing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of these weeks. This Class provides some of the most exciting and competitive racing on Windermere. Do not be fooled into thinking these fantastic looking yachts, with only a main sail and jib are necessarily easy, they are challenging and rewarding to sail and there is nothing more exciting than a large fleet of these fantastic yachts, fully powered up and charging for the line just before the start gun.

The Windermere 17ft Class yachts (25ft LOA) are sailed by a crew of two. They are kept afloat on a swing mooring through the racing season. They were first raced in 1904, and the current fleet comprises of yachts aged between 8 and 90 years of age. As a Restricted Design class, all the yachts, regardless of age, are capable of winning. To make things even more interesting the fleet is split into a Modern and Classic fleet. Owners of the Classic yachts have a chance at winning two trophies in each race i.e.  first overall and first Classic yacht over the line. You can sometimes hear Class members saying, “It’s not the yacht that’s fast, it is the nut on the tiller”. As testimony to this fact, the boat winning the highest number of trophies during the 2019 season was Atholl, a yacht whose keel was laid in 1934 but still regularly beats many of the modern yachts. Racing with this fleet is so close that on many occasions it’s a photo finish between the first few yachts across the line.

If you would like to try, buy, or crew in a Windermere 17ft yacht, then make enquiries using the Contact Us facility at the bottom of the website’s Home page to ask to be put in touch with the 17ft fleet, leaving a phone number so that either the 17ft Fleet Captain or 17ft Fleet Secretary can get back to you.

The fleet also has a WhatsApp group where members share information, and this also assists with crewing opportunities.

 

There are always a select few 17ft yachts for sale at very reasonable prices, details of some can be found on the RWYC web site (see For sale).  

Hmmm, wouldn’t it be nice to have a Windermere Class Yacht! thoughts on ownership

 

The Yachts