Vanguard sailboats: an Olympic-class dinghy legacy that outgrew its own name
Vanguard Sailboats began as a sideline. When Peter and Olaf Harken — brothers born in Indonesia at the start of World War II to Dutch and Swedish parents — set up shop in a run-down garage in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 1967, boatbuilding and hardware manufacturing shared the same roof. The venture that would define competitive dinghy racing in America for two decades started as an afterthought to a hardware business that would eventually eclipse it.
Origins and ownership
The Harkens' first attempt at a company, formed right after Olaf's return from Navy service in 1967, was a short-lived boatbuilding, sailmaking, and ball-bearing-block venture called Scanda. Vanguard Boats followed that same year, based in the Waukesha garage alongside the fledgling Harken Yacht Equipment. Early production leaned on the collegiate market: Badger Tech dinghies for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Club Flying Juniors for college sailing programs. When the brothers began selling hardware separately from boats, Lands' End founder Gary Comer advised branding the blocks "Harken" rather than "Vanguard," reasoning that boat manufacturers might balk at hardware carrying a rival builder's name.
Vanguard's fortunes tracked the U.S. Olympic sailing calendar. The company built its first International 470 in 1969 and reached full production in 1970, moving into a larger Pewaukee, Wisconsin facility around the same time to support the expansion — accounts differ on whether that move landed in 1970 or 1971. The 1973 U.S. gasoline crisis hit hard, plummeting sales and forcing rotating layoffs; rather than fold, the company added a two-version 420 in 1974 as a steppingstone class. By the early 1980s, Vanguard's 470s had lost ground to overseas-built boats, and in 1986, Steve Clark and Chip Johns of Quarter Moon, Inc. bought the Vanguard tooling and name. Production moved to Rhode Island; the Harkens kept the hardware business, with Peter citing the difficulty of running both operations and Olaf saying simply that it had stopped being fun.
The Vanguard name changed hands again in April 2007, when Gavel Securities Limited — the holding company behind Performance Sailcraft Europe and Laser Sailboats Limited — acquired Vanguard Sailboats, including Seitech Products and Vanguard's retail stores. Chip Johns was by then Vanguard's former president; David Graham held the role at the time of the sale.
The designers
Vanguard built to other designers' lines rather than developing its own hulls, and its history is a chain of partnerships with the sailors who drew them. Securing U.S. rights to the International 470 meant negotiating with French designer André Cornu, who initially wanted a 5,000-boat annual guarantee before settling for 2,000. The National Sailing Hall of Fame's biography of Olaf Harken credits the brothers with consulting designer Bruce Kirby as they weighed which boat to bet their Olympic hopes on before committing to the 470. On the Finn side, Finn Gold Cup winner Joerg Bruder supplied the specifications Vanguard built to — Peter Harken later described Bruder as, at the time, second only to the legendary Paul Elvström. Decades later, naval architect Bob Ames designed the Vector, described by Sail Magazine as a high-performance skiff built for speed and agility aimed at experienced sailors.
Construction through the eras
Vanguard's most distinctive construction work came out of its Finn program. Faced with a design that needed to reconcile upwind and downwind performance, the in-house team combined the narrow bow of the Newport Finn with the flat stern of the Teal Finn to shorten the path water traveled from bow to stern. Three-time Finn Gold Cup winner Cam Lewis contributed another refinement, suggesting fiberglass fibers be aligned at 45-degree angles rather than fore-and-aft around the deck's mast hole, reasoning that the loads there ran more diagonally than fore-and-aft.
Lines and generations
Two distinct eras define the Vanguard lineup. The Wisconsin years centered on Olympic-class racing: the 470 and Finn dinghies, which together accounted for nearly 1,500 and nearly 1,100 boats respectively, with Vanguard supplying every Finn sailed at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics — the last Finn the company built. Around that racing core sat a steppingstone and training fleet: the 420, added in 1974, and later Optimists, Club 420s, Flying Juniors, two Gary Hoyt-designed pedal boats, MIT Tech dinghies, and the Volant, which former Vanguard employee John Schiefelbein described as basically a Flying Dutchman with the back end chopped off.
Who Vanguard is for
Vanguard's fleet splits along the same line that ran through the company's own history. The 470s and Finns are Olympic-class racing dinghies built to strict class rules — an owner is buying a piece of a competitive circuit, not a casual daysailer. The training fleet built around the 420, Optimist, and Flying Junior lines serves a different buyer: club and collegiate programs, or families sailing the same boats those programs use. Life-size Finn, 420, and Volant examples now stand in the Harken company lobby, a fitting memorial to a business that never stopped being, at its core, one where the sailors who raced the boats often shaped how they were built.
