Darby SS-8

Description

The DARBY SS-8 (also written as Darby SS 8, Darby 8 SS, or Darby SS-8 Sidestep Hull) is a small, innovative one-person sailing dinghy designed and built by S. Newman Darby (full name Newman Darby, 1928–2016), the American inventor best known as the originator of the modern windsurfing concept in 1948. In the 1980s, Darby received a design patent for this novel sailboat, which he called the Darby 8 SS sidestep hull. It is an extremely shallow-draft, experimental, and highly stable single-handed sailing dinghy that uses a unique "sidestep" or buoyant keel concept to achieve exceptional stability and the ability to sail upwind with almost no draft. Darby described it as separating buoyancy and stability functions in a way that allowed very shallow draft while remaining remarkably stable even in strong winds.