Windrider sailboats: rotomolded trailerable trimarans built out of a kayak maker's ambition
Windrider built rotomolded-polyethylene trimarans engineered around a single problem: getting a stable multihull onto a trailer and off a beach without a crew of riggers. The brand traces to a kayak company's push into sailing, drew on the pedigree of Searunner designer Jim Brown, and later produced one of its era's few production hydrofoil sailboats, the RAVE.
Origins and ownership
Windrider was spawned in the mid-1990s by kayak manufacturer Wilderness Systems, which would later become part of Confluence Paddlesports. Wilderness Systems founders Andy Zimmerman and John Shepard teamed up with Jim Brown — creator of the Searunner 31 and 37 — and formed Windrider Sailing Trimarans as a new division within the company; Zimmerman had recruited Brown after Brown tried an early paddle-sail prototype, the "Kaimaran," at a company outing. By 2008, Windrider's assets, molds included, were headed for scrap; a group of hobbyist retirees bought the assets and moved production to a new site. Dean Sanberg, who first saw a Windrider 17 pulled up on a beach in Belize in 2009, bought the company that summer at a fire-sale price and set to work reviving the Windrider line and its dealer network. On December 31, 2015, Windrider International announced a merger with Nickels Boat Works: Nickels became Windrider's manufacturing division, then building nine sailboat models at its Flint, Michigan plant and importing five Astus trimaran models from France.
The designers
Jim Brown, known for the Searunner 31 and 37, designed the Windrider 16 and, working with the Windrider factory team, the Windrider 17; under a Designer/Manufacturer Agreement, Zimmerman and Shepard paid him a 2.5 percent royalty on net sales of the models he created for them. Mark Balogh, working with Windrider Trimarans, designed the Windrider 10 — a boat Brown himself called a "trimaran Sunfish" — later also marketed as the Tango, or WRTango. The 17's design nearly came apart before it reached production: engineer Mike McGarry, hired as the division's technical director, helped save the program when Brown considered pulling out over a dispute. McGarry went on to join naval architect Sam Bradfield's team at HydroSail, Inc., alongside Tom Haman, to design the Windrider RAVE hydrofoil trimaran, aiming to bring practical hydrofoil sailing to everyday sailors; Bradfield had already made his name designing the hydrofoil NF2, holder of the Class C world speed sailing record from 1978 to 1982.
Construction through the eras
Windrider's hulls were rotomolded polyethylene throughout the line, a construction method that simplified the structure and, on the 17, was reinforced with anodized aircraft aluminum framing. The first rotomolded, wave-piercing Windrider trimaran left the factory in 1996, the year the 16 reached dealers, and hundreds more followed. The 17 arrived in 2002, alongside the compact 10, which was designed to be easy to sail, light, and stable to the point of being very hard to flip. The RAVE hydrofoil, whose hull was likewise rotomolded polyethylene, carried its aircraft aluminum tubing structure to bear the hydrofoil's stress loads; it was in production by 1998, when the factory had already logged 150 orders since the previous August, and continued through 2003, by which point 136 had been built and production halted. Ownership changes left their mark on the range, too: 17s built after the 2008 handover to the new owners had lengthened crossbeams for extra width and speed, trading away the boat's earlier reputation for being nearly impossible to capsize along with its ability to telescope down to legal trailering width.
Lines and generations
Two lines emerged from that shared construction approach: a run of trailerable daysailing trimarans — the 16, 17, and 10 — and the RAVE, a specialized hydrofoil offshoot built in far smaller numbers. By the time of the 2015 Nickels merger, Windrider's trimaran lineup still listed the 17, 16, and Tango alongside five imported Astus trimaran models, evidence the daysailing line endured well past the RAVE's early-2000s production run.
Who Windrider is for
Windrider suits sailors after a trimaran that tows easily and launches fast — the rotomolded hulls were built around that promise, and SAIL magazine's professional test pilot judged the 17 "practically impossible to capsize" after early trials, a verdict credited with driving its sales. The RAVE, meanwhile, appealed to a narrower audience chasing hydrofoil speed rather than beach convenience, the product of Bradfield's speed-record pedigree applied to a production boat.
