Melges sailboats: a Wisconsin scow yard whose founder's family raced at the Olympic and America's Cup level
Harry C. Melges Sr. started out building wooden flat-bottom rowboats in Zenda, Wisconsin, in 1945, launching the business with the Melges C Scow, its first class of boat. The company his son and grandson later ran stayed a family concern for three generations, but it was never just a boatyard: Harry Sr.'s son, Harry "Buddy" Melges Jr., became an Olympic medalist and multiple world sailing champion, and it was Buddy's own America's Cup win that pushed the company to build a new kind of boat, the Melges 24. That combination — a Midwest family builder producing an Olympic and America's Cup sailor who then shaped the product line himself — carried the company until October 2025, when ownership passed outside the Melges family for the first time.
Origins and ownership
Buddy Melges grew up on Delavan Lake sailing boats his father built at Melges Boat Works and was, early on, involved in operating the family business himself. His competitive record is extensive: an Olympic gold medal in the Soling class in 1972 and a bronze in the Flying Dutchman class in 1964, five E-Scow National Championship titles, two Star world titles, three 5.5 Metre world titles, and seven Skeeter Ice Boat world titles, along with a 1987 America's Cup challenge aboard Heart of America against Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes and, in 1992, a Cup win as co-helmsman of America3 alongside Bill Koch. He was still winning as an octogenarian, taking the A-Scow Inland Yachting Association Championship in 2010 at age 80. Buddy died on May 18, 2023, survived by his wife of 69 years, Gloria, and their children Laura, Hans, and Harry C. Melges III; he was preceded in death by his parents, Louise and founder Harry C. Melges Sr. His grandchildren include Harry C. Melges IV, a fourth generation carrying the family name.
Harry Melges III, Buddy's son, became CEO of Melges Performance Sailboats in 1995 and later won the 2002 Melges 24 World Championship in Travemünde, Germany, in his own right. In fall 2025, the company he led was sold to Cate Muller-Terhune, who began her career in sailing-industry marketing before handling marketing and business development at her family's architecture firm, and Allan Terhune Jr., who has led North Sails' North American One-Design division since 2007 and holds 14 national and continental sailing titles. Harry Melges III said he expected the Terhunes to honor that history while continuing to innovate. Andy Burdick, with 40 years already at the company, continued as president, and Harry Melges III remained involved as a board member. The company stayed headquartered in Zenda, Wisconsin, with the Melges Watersports Center in Merritt Island, Florida, continuing to operate as a hub for racing, education, and community; Quantum Sails Zenda, though also managed by Melges, was not part of the sale.
The designers
The San Diego-based team of John Reichel and Jim Pugh, working with input from Hans Melges, designed the Melges 24. Reichel/Pugh also holds design credit on two of the smaller one-designs that followed: the 14 and the 15. For the brand's largest boat, Melges turned to a different house: the Melges 40 was designed by Botín Partners and built by Premier Composite Technologies.
Construction through the eras
Practical Sailor and Spinsheet reviews of the Melges 24 found a hull and deck built from aircraft-grade S-glass fiber rather than standard marine-grade E-glass, paired with vinylester rather than the more common polyester resin, over a closed-cell foam core; the two were vacuum-bagged and joined with a two-part adhesive system rather than mechanical fasteners, while the tiller, rudder, keel, and mast were carbon fiber. Two decades later, the Melges 40 represented a different order of construction entirely: an all-carbon-and-epoxy hull, per Sailing World, built by Premier Composite Technologies in Dubai. Yachting World described its canting-keel system as a direct development of IMOCA and Volvo 65 practice, using a single ram with a double-acting cylinder, and noted the boat carries a single centerline canard rather than twin daggerboards. Between those two poles, the Melges 14, which entered production in the summer of 2015, used an infused-epoxy, PVC-cored build with its mast tube engineered into a structural brace inside the hull to distribute loads and guard against step failure.
Lines and generations
The modern sportboat line runs from the Melges 24's 1993 introduction — a prototype win at Key West Race Week, 250 boats delivered in the U.S. by the end of 1994, and a joint venture with British Aerospace for European production — through the Melges 32, up to the Melges 40 of 2017, the only canting-keel production one-design yacht in the world according to its own designer and Yachts and Yachting Magazine's Performance Keelboat of the Year that year. The 14, 15, and 17 fill out a smaller-boat, one-design tier alongside that sportboat line, distinct from the grand-prix 40, while the I-20 Scow carries the company's founding scow-racing line into the current catalog.
Who Melges is for
A Melges is built by a company whose own founding family produced an Olympic gold medalist and America's Cup winner, then let that racing pedigree shape a product line running from entry-level one-design dinghies to a carbon-fiber, canting-keel grand-prix yacht. Sailors drawn to that direct line between competitive sailing and boatbuilding — and reassured that the Wisconsin factory, its president, and a Melges family board seat all carried through the company's 2025 sale — are the audience Melges has built for since 1945.
