A World of Snipe

by Carol Cronin 07/16/2020

From Sailing World

The Snipe dinghy provides more than great one-design sailing experience; it connects you to a global family.

by Carol Cronin

For more than 30 years, the Snipe—a hard-chine 15-footer almost a century old—has been my teacher. I first stepped into one as a newbie 20-something, as a crew for the most demanding skipper I’ve ever sailed with. That unlikely “blind date” led to countless friendships, fitness, failures and, of course, fun.

Snipe sailing takes me all over the country and around the world—and brings me right back home to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, where Kim Couranz and I won the Snipe Women’s Worlds in 2018. I’ve rigged boats in a shivery, rain-soaked Danish boat park; surfed ocean waves in Japan, where swells seemed to swallow boats and rigs whole. I’ve drifted around a Massachusetts lake so small that I could overhear an international sailor wonder aloud where the races would be conducted. If variety is the spice of life, the Snipe is the cayenne pepper of one-design sailing.