The Daring grew out of the Arthur Robb designed 5.5 metre “Vision”, which won the silver medal at the 1956 Olympics.

Sir Owen Aisher was the philanthropist behind the class, his intention being to build inexpensive boats to allow Cowes locals to experience keelboat racing and there’s many a Cowes-born racing skipper who has begun his sailing career aboard a Daring. Sir Owen commissioned Arthur Robb to create this scaled down Vision and the result was a true Metre yacht, narrow of profile, flat of sheet and with elegant ends. Built to sail in all conditions, the rig is modest for the hull size, with a high aspect main and fractional-rigged jib. Sir Owen, whose son, Robin, is Admiral of the Daring fleet and still races with them, actually paid for the first five boats and the class soon expanded, with a total of 36 being built up to 1992.

By this stage, running costs were growing beyond the reasonable and the increasing need for maintenance of the older boats, with plywood decks, was causing an imbalance that the class was specifically intended to avoid. So the class began to build new boats from an original hull mould, which the class owned, with a brand new deck mould. The spars, keels, etc were taken from existing boats. The first boat produced under this system was launched in 2009.

The most elegant fleet of boats in Cowes, the Darings are experiencing a revival of which their founder would thoroughly approve. The class enjoyed its Golden Jubilee year in 2011.

The Daring class has supported Cowes Classics Week since the start in 2008, and the majority of the fleet compete for the CCW Trophy the Loup Garou Model, and for the Daring Class Trophy and the Metre Regatta Trophy (Mike Lilwall on right, Director of Charles Stanley, presenting the Loup Garou 1/2 model to 2015 winner Decoy).

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Link: www.daring.org.uk