Shelf wear and fading on spine.

For a century now, New Zealand sailors have been designing, building, and sailing boats that will plane.

In true Kiwi fashion, their innovative developments have mostly been carried out by amateurs ? sailors keen to build a faster boat for next season ? who taught themselves design and boat-building skills out in the back shed and then learned to sail their new light boats in innovative ways.

Many Kiwi sailors have started out as youngsters racing P-class boats. Whether they progressed through the one-design classes of Zeddies, Idle Alongs, and Xies, experimented with R-class or Q-class boats, or in more recent times got into Optimists, Laswers and 470s, they have honed their skills and worked out what makes boats sail fast.