Sailing Dinghy Plans — Vintage and Folding Designs

A vintage angle on the sailing dinghy

PlansForU already carries “Rowboats, Sailboats, Dinghy plans” — a modern multi-design SKU. This new product takes a different angle: vintage and folding designs. One buildable folding-dinghy plan set, and two pre-1929 PD sailing references that document period-correct dinghy rigging and construction.

What’s included

1. Micro Folding Dinghy (510 KB) — modern buildable folding-dinghy plan. Packs into a car boot. Sailing rig included.
2. Practical Boat-Sailing (Frazar, 1907 — 3.9 MB) — pre-1929 PD. Small-sailboat handling, rigging, and construction-relevant illustrations.
3. Canoe and Boat Building (Stephens, 1889 — 11.3 MB) — the classic 19th-century manual. Covers sailing canoes and small sailing-dinghy lines with offsets.

What’s covered

• Folding-dinghy construction — hinged-panel hull, folding seats, dinghy rig
• Period-correct dinghy rigging — gaff, gunter, balanced-lug rigs
• Pre-Bermudan-rig sail handling technique
• 19th-century plank-on-frame construction for small sailing craft
• Sailing-canoe heritage that informed modern dinghy design

Who this is for

Builders wanting a vintage rig and lines rather than modern fibreglass-class look. Apartment-dwellers and travellers (the Micro Folding Dinghy fits in a car). Maritime historians interested in pre-modern small-boat design.

About these documents

The Micro Folding Dinghy plan is community-shared on the Internet Archive. The two pre-1929 books (Frazar 1907, Stephens 1889) are unambiguously public domain.

Related plans on PlansForU

• Rowboats, Sailboats, Dinghy Plans (modern)
• Vintage Sailboat Plans Bundle
• Wooden Boat Plans Bundle
• All Boat Plans