Re: 1957 Sailfish

Posted by Karl on Sep 7, 2005

My uncle regularly used to sail one of these older plywood Sailfish. The boat has the same square footage of sail area as the sunfish, in fact the sails and rigs are interchangeable. The sailfish is lighter and has less beam, but boy they can move! Since they were considered at the time to be a match in the Sunfish class (no handicap) he used to kick some butt at the weekend sailboat races. Sitting on a flat board can be a bit uncomfortable for the long haul though.

AMF is no longer in business, nor is Alcort. There are so many Sunfish out there in the world though that here is a strong aftermarket for sails and hardware. I haven't looked into it yet, but I think someone actually bought the rights, and may be producing the Sunfish again. There is what appears to be a brand new one that showed up at my family's summer house last year. A gift from one of the families that has been renting the house for a couple of weeks every summer for the last 30 years. Nice people!

If you can salvage the hull, it's a cool boat to have, especially the plywood ones. There just aren't that many of them out there anymore.

In Response to: Re: 1957 Sailfish by Mark Camp on Sep 7, 2005

Replies:

• Re: 1957 Sailfish by Karl on Sep 7, 2005