Introduction
This home page is dealing with the history of Danish spidsgatters and in particular Danish class-spidsgatters. The webmaster is Thorbjørn Joest Andersen, the lucky owner of the 45-square-metre Berg boat "Ursa". It is my intention with this web-site to provide a place for you to see photos and read stories about spidsgatters -- primarily class-spidsgatters -- beginning with spidsgatters in the Øresund area. As a starting place, I will show photos of my own boat and a few others. Hopefully, this page will soon expand to include photos and stories of class- spidsgatters from around the world.
The Danish class-spidsgatters date back to around 1928, when the first one,
S45 D1 "Bjørn" was built (see under "History"). The boats are classed
acording to sail-area and the sizes are 20, 26, 30, 38, 45 and 55
square-metres. Most of the boats were built between 1930 and 1950, with
the majority built before WWII. The decision to create the spidsgatter-classes
came from a demand for a strong, roomy and seaworthy boat for cruising and racing, which was also not too expensive to build. In order to keep cost low, it was decided that the boats should be built of pine on oak or ash and with mast
of Scandinavian spruce.
The class-spidsgatters are "construction-classes". That is, there was an allowance for design latitude, or individual variation, within certain structural limits. The scantlings for the class ensured the boats were very strong and seaworthy. While these scantlings are probably the main reason why so many of the boats are still under sail, some said that the boats were too heavy . For example, one of the designers, Georg Berg, preferred a lighter construction that used only steambent frames instead the combination of both sawn and steambent frames. However, this was not allowed under the rules, and partly because of this a number of boats were built "outside" the rules and not classed.
There is not an association solely for class-spidsgatters but many of them
are members of DFÆL, the club for older yachts in Denmark (phone number 75 81 60 51). It is my feeling
that the interest in the boats are growing and that most of them are in good
hands. Some of them do need a caring hand though, so if you have got the urge
to maintain one of these beauties then please, get going!
A short note about sail-numbers: Class-spidsgatters are given numbers in the
following way: first "S" for spidsgatter and then the sailarea (e.g. 30).
Under this you will find a "D" for Denmark and a number. Every size-class is
numbered from 1 and onwards and you can therefore normally tell something
about the age of the boat from the number itself.