Argie 15 - A Boat with Multiple Personalities

The This photo of Nick Fairley's boat shows the capacity of the Argie 15 pretty well. The late Colin Farlam, a larger-than-life character around the yacht clubs of Cape Town, liked to tell the story of his first sail in an Argie 15. He was visiting a friend at Zeekoevlei, the lake where I grew up and did most of my small boat sailing. The Zeekoevlei Yacht Club fleet was on the water, racing in quite strong conditions. There was an Argie 15 on the lawn and the friend said "Come, lets go race the Fireballs". Colin's response was "We can't race them in that". They did "race them in that" and Colin was shocked. He told me that they could hold the Fireballs on all headings except that they sailed a fraction lower to windward. Not bad for a 3:1 family dinghy. But this 3:1 family dinghy can pick up it's skirts and fly like no 3:1 family dinghy is supposed to do. Colin immediately bought one for himself and later declared to me that the Argie 15 was the best dinghy that he had ever sailed.

The Argie 15 has classic styling, with a springy sheer and good freeboard. That makes it a dry boat in lumpy water and well-suited to fishing in moderate coastal conditions. This was the plan of Pete Frielinnghaus when he fitted a centre console and 30hp outboard to his Argie 15. He reports that it can do more than 20 knots. Pretty good for a 3:1 family dinghy.

Pete Frielinghaus in his Argie 15 centre console fishing boat.

 After the 2004 tsunami, I was approached by a church organisation from California, asking if I had a design that could be used to help replace the decimated subsistence fishing fleets. I donated the Argie 15 design for as many boats as they needed to build. They cut plywood component kits and supplied the kits plus all other materials needed, as well as training, to allow fishermen to build the boats on the beach in India. I have no idea how many were built this way.

The Argie 15 would be a great boat for raid-type adventure sailing events. It has the load capacity to carry the crew plus stores, camping gear etc. It is fast enough to get there ahead of most of the competition. It is light enough to be portaged over short distances or trailed on a dolly for longer overland legs.

I have been promising myself for years that I will build an Argie 15 for myself. Somehow there has always been some other project or adventure in the way, so it hasn't happened. This would be a good boat to take to the Our USA kits are cut and shipped by Chesapeake Light Craft in Annapolis but must be ordered from us direct. For suppliers in other countries go to our kits page.

There are many sailing videos on-line of the Argie 15. A new one by Justin Philips of Nick Fairley's new Argie 15 sailing in about 12 knots of breeze, shows how responsive and quick it is, tacking on a tickey and accelerating very quickly out of turns. / .

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