The New AltO
This two-person, single trapeze design offers fast, exciting, and fun sailing, in a comfortable, responsive and controllable racing dinghy. It is an ideal fast club racing class suitable for a wide range of both crew weights and ages, male or female.
The AltO incorporates the best from past and present designs with innovation for the future.
About the AltO
The AltO is a new, two person, single trapeze fast racing dinghy. It has been
designed to meet a combination of parameters making it an exciting, fun,
tactical racing class to suit a wide range of crew combinations. In spite of a
multitude of new sailing dinghies over the past 20 years there has been no
successful, fast*, non-skiff dinghy without wings or racks since the 505 more
than fifty years ago.
*py < 950
The parameters for the AltO design were:
- One design - for price, control and tactical racing
- Large - maximum practical length for speed, stability and comfort
- Comfortable - for helm and crew in all winds
- Fast - for excitement and fun
- Light - fast sailing and ease of handling on shore
- Durable - for longevity of competitive racing and resale value
- Affordable - good value for money
- Ability to run - to be compatable with other racing classes and club courses
- Simple gybing - for easy crew handling
- Hull rocker - fast tacking and good all weather performance
- Pivoting centre board - for ease of launching and coming ashore
- Minimum control systems - to increase tactical racing by reducing the
technical and cheque book content
- No wings or frames - to keep it light, simple, comfortable and affordable
After four years of design, development and testing, the final version of the
AltO will be launched in Spring 08. It combines the best from the past and the
present and is designed for the future by introducing the AltO pole system, which
allows the asymmetric spinnaker to dead run and thus benefit from both the easy
gybing of the asymmetric and the running ability of the symmetric. It can
therefore race comfortably with non-spinnaker and symmetric spinnaker classes on
traditional club courses and is able to run when against the tide in rivers and
estuaries.
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