United States Sailing Center : Henderson Harbor, New York

Several events and phenomena have influenced the growth of small boat sailing in America since the Nineteenth Century. They are: The invention, production and widespread use of the motorboat and motorship as replacements for the older sailing designs used both for commerce and for pleasure; The rise of the middle class in America and the increased costs of yachting in the traditional sense, where 40 foot yachts were considered "small"; The yachting periodicals, which, until recently, were publishing new small boat designs and the instructions for building the boats. Mass production of these craft came only after the Second World War; The two World Wars, which left many yachtsmen without their large boats and/or the unrestricted waters on which to sail them and forced them to sail in small boats in protected waters; The technologies developed during W.W.II gave the U.S. a yachting industry and new materials suitable to industrial processes - specifically fiberglass, for building hulls having compound curves; The marriage of the boat and the automobile via the boat trailer, which has made competitions on a national level possible; and,The increased emphasis in all competition of the purely man-to-man contest, where the boats are so much alike that the differences are absolutely negligible.The designing, construction and sailing of boats had been the province of the individual; and the best sailors were always men intimately acquainted with all aspects of the arts involved- they were craftsmen in every respect. With the advent of the wholly mass produced, standardized such craftsmen and ingenious thinking in the sport.College of Architecture and PlanningThesis (B. Arch.