Windward sailboats: one name, three unrelated builders
"Windward" is not a single boatbuilder. Six models carry the name in our catalog, but they trace to three completely unconnected companies: Windward Boatworks, a small scow builder in Princeton, Wisconsin; Luger Industries, a Minneapolis kit-boat manufacturer; and a third yard, behind the larger cruising models, that published sources could not identify. The word itself is ordinary sailing vocabulary — the direction a boat sails toward the wind — which is likely why it turned up as a company name three separate times with no connection between the uses. The three lines also differ enormously in how well documented they are: the Wisconsin and Minnesota companies have real, citable histories behind them, while the yard behind four of the six models — the Windward 24, 30, 36, and 850 — has essentially none. That gap is worth stating plainly rather than papering over, and it shapes most of what follows.
Origins and ownership
Windward Boatworks began in the fall of 1994, founded by a group of young sailors looking for a way to get a quality boat at a reasonable price. It started out as a scow builder, and its first product was the M20, a design that had been popular through the 1970s and 1980s. Windward Boatworks later acquired Barnett Boatworks, adding the Barnett Butterfly and the Barnett 1400 to its lineup — by the company's own account of how it came to build a design originally credited to John Barnett.
Luger Industries began earlier and separately, in Minneapolis. Orm Luger recalled that he and his brother Ren started the company in their garage in 1950; in its early days another company manufactured kits to the brothers' design, which they then sold themselves. Luger developed its first fiberglass kit boat in 1959, and the boat-kit market it competed in once had more than fourteen producers before shrinking to just three by the 1980s, with Luger still among them. Ren and Orm sold Luger Industries in 1986, though both remained involved in boating afterward. Our catalog credits Luger Industries as the builder of the Windward 21.
The third company is the hardest to describe, because almost nothing about it could be independently confirmed. Our catalog carries the Windward 24, 30, 36, and 850 — four of the six models under this name — as the work of a third company, distinct from the other two. Published, citable sources on that company proved impossible to obtain, so this page cannot responsibly name it or set out its history.
The designers
Barnett's credit for the Butterfly survived the company's acquisition intact: Windward Boatworks builds a design it attributes to John Barnett, unchanged by the change in ownership.
The Windward 21's design credit is less settled. The surviving company history documents Luger Industries' early fiberglass kit line, developed with the industrial design firm Charles Butler & Associates of New York — but that 1959 line was a trio of runabout powerboats, not a sailboat. No published source names a designer for the sailboat our catalog calls the Windward 21; the connection between Luger Industries and that model exists only in our own records.
For the Windward 24, 30, 36, and 850, this page names no designer at all. Our catalog carries individual attributions for each of these models, but none of them are supported by a published source, and one of our own existing pages on this make already contradicts our own database about who designed one of these boats — a conflict with no outside source available to settle it. Rather than repeat an unconfirmed or disputed credit, this page leaves the designer question for these four models open.
Construction through the eras
The Butterfly was designed in the early 1960s as a fun, lightweight, small-lake version of the ILYA C-scow, and went into production in 1961; the class has been virtually unchanged since 1962. More than ten thousand Butterfly-class boats have been built — the largest scow class in the United States. Windward Boatworks describes its updates to the boat as improvements to build quality alone, making new boats stronger and longer-lasting while preserving the same performance as older ones, meaning an older Butterfly hull isn't at a competitive disadvantage against a newer one. The design is presented as one of the pioneers of one-design sailing, where identical boats turn a race into a pure test of skill. One owner's review of a 1977 Barnett Butterfly found it planed easily on a slippery, chine-less hull and was easy to right after a capsize, though the same reviewer flagged loose, badly repaired toe rails as the most common problem on boats of this kind.
The Windward 21 is a fundamentally different kind of product: Luger Industries built it as a home-build kit, though factory-assembled boats were sold too — and a kit's build quality rests on the individual who assembled it, not on Luger's own workmanship. That distinction matters more for this model than almost anything else about it.
Lines and generations
Three unrelated products carry the Windward name. The Boatworks Butterfly is a one-design scow, built by Windward Boatworks. The Windward 21 is Luger Industries' kit-built cruiser-daysailer. And the Windward 24, 30, 36, and 850 are larger cruising boats from a third builder — distinct from the other two, and the one this page can say the least about. A listing for a "Windward" sailboat could be any of these three, and confirming which one is the first step in understanding what's actually for sale.
Who Windward is for
A buyer's fit with "Windward" depends entirely on which of the three lines is in question. The Butterfly suits someone who wants an established one-design scow with a large racing fleet and a design that has been virtually unchanged since 1962. The Windward 21 suits a buyer comfortable evaluating a kit-built boat on its own merits, since Luger Industries' name on the model says less about consistent factory quality than a builder's name usually does. And the Windward 24, 30, 36, and 850 suit a buyer willing to research a boat's history largely from its own paperwork, since little about their builder survives in published sources.
