From simple beginnings 52 years ago as a junior boat that could be home built of plywood for $50, the International Optimist Dinghy has become the most popular children's boat in the world. More than 300,000 boats in over 100 countries now exist.

The Optimist phenomenon got started because of a civic organization in Florida - the Clearwater Optimist Club - that couldn't effectively run a soap box derby contest due to Clearwater's flat terrain. So they turned to dinghy builder Clark Mills, who produced a design and then built the first boat in a day and a half. The year was 1947.

In its first decade, the Clearwater Optimist Pram developed several competitive fleets, primarily in Florida. With Mills' permission, a Danish tall ship captain, Axel Damgaard took a pram back to Europe. With battened sail and simpler running rigging, the renamed International Optimist Dinghy quickly spread throughout the world. The critical mass and tighter tolerances of this new design, plus the efforts of builders to develop better fiberglass models, gave it the edge over the Optimist Pram. Over the last 20 years, the Dinghy replaced the pram as a competitive junior trainer - even in Florida.

In recent years, the U.S. Optimist Dinghy Association has grown quickly all along the East Coast, the South and the Midwest. It now boasts nearly 3,000 members, making it one of the five biggest class associations in the country

Many builders have been responsible for constructing the hundreds of thousands of Optimists. Vanguard Sailboats in Rhode Island and McLaughlin Boatworks in Tennessee currently build most of the U.S. Boats

John Burnham, Sailing World Magazine