Yngling Description:

Yngling Line drawing

Sailing Characteristics
One touch of the helm and you'll understand the loving loyalty of Yngling owners worldwide. The boat simply sails beautifully.
Those familiar with the Soling will instantly recognize the Yngling as a "mini-Soling," a description which is quite apt. In the Yngling (pronounced "ING-ling"), designer Jan Linge basically duplicated his Soling, making it smaller, more suitable for average-sized people, easier to trail (behind even a four-cylinder car), and less expensive to own. The Yngling shares the Soling's sleek hull form, well-balanced rig, and responsive helm. While the Yngling is not as fast as the Soling, it is quicker, and more nimble. It turns more quickly and in less distance, and responds better to crew weight trim adjustments.

The Yngling is designed to sail with three crew (although two can handle it easily). Optimal crew weight is 400 to 500 lbs., so the Yngling accommodates both juniors and normally sized adults, and it is the ideal women's racing boat (in fact, IYRU selected the Yngling for its first International Women's Championship in 1994, and ISAF chose it as the boat for the 2004 Olympic women's keelboat event). Sail controls on the Yngling are easy to manage, and the effects of small adjustments are felt by the crew. The Yngling sails in a delicate and fast upwind groove.
Design & Safety.

In 1990 Jan Linge re-designed the interior of the Yngling, giving it a water-tight, raised, "double-bottom" cockpit sole. With "Elvstrøm" bailers on port and starboard just above the waterline, the boat drains water quickly under sail, upwind and downwind.
The Yngling is unsinkable: Class rules mandate that a boat have enough styrofoam flotation so that, if filled entirely with water, an Yngling can still float -- with three crew aboard!

Construction & Value
Compared with similar keelboats such as the Soling, Etchells, Shields, Sonar, J-22, and J-24, the Yngling is the least expensive and easiest to maintain (a used Yngling can be bought for about the price of a suit of sails for an Etchells!). The Yngling is also one of the best values, beyond its low purchase price, due to its rigid one-design construction rules. Class rules mandate that Ynglings be built with hand laid-up fiber-glass, instead of cheaper and less-durable methods such as chopped fiber-glass. The benefit of this requirement is that the Yngling hull is extremely rigid and durable: hulls thirty years old are competitive with brand new ones. Such longevity in a fiber-glass boat is rare.

International Class Organizations
The Yngling has been an ISAF (formerly IYRU) International Class since 1979. Strong and enthusiastic class associations exist in two-thirds of European countries, Australia, and North America. National and regional regattas are held throughout these areas, and the world championships are hosted around the world, from Denmark to Australia to the USA.
Approximately 4,000 Ynglings are sailing worldwide. The core of the fleet is a competitive but friendly group of long-time Yngling sailors. Additionally, Ynglings were commonly raced as training boats by Soling Olympians (and at least one America's Cup skipper hopeful); now that the Yngling is itself an Olympic boat, top-caliber female sailors around the world are being welcomed to the class.

	The Yngling Story:
	[extracted from a 1987 IYA newsletter article by Yngling designer Jan Linge] The initial idea was to design and build a small keelboat for my son, Øyvin, who at that time was 14 days old. Hence the name "Yngling," which means youngster! This was in 1967, ... shortly after the Soling had been through the IYRU trials in Keil and Travemunde. Therefore the same philosophy of design, although the Yngling is not a "scaled-down" version of the Soling as many people seem to believe. The Yngling has quite different proportions with relatively more beam, higher freeboard with more sheer, fuller body-lines, etc., but she is a nice "little sister" of the Olympic class Soling. By retaining most of the characteristics the intention was to create a smaller, lighter, and more easily handled boat, which could be a one-design keelboat for juniors as well as a suitable recruiting boat for the Soling. ... The class rules were right from the beginning made very restrictive as regards equipment and sails. Furthermore, to enforce the one-design principle, all production moulds etc. were to be delivered from one single source of supply. Plugs and moulds were built at Bringsværd's yard during the winter 67/68, and the first 7 boats sailed in the 1968 season. Five of these took part in our main national regatta, and they made such a good impression that orders started coming in at Bringsværd's yard. I lent our own Y-N to Paul Elvstrøm, who evaluated the boat during the autumn and winter, and he introduced the boat to Danish sailors. Before the 1969 season 55 more Ynglings were built, and the class was established in Norway. ... In 1971 I was honored by receiving the Design Prize for the Yngling from the Norwegian Design Council. The International Yngling Association was founded in 1971 and the first World Cup Race was arranged in Holland the same year. ... IYRU [now ISAF] granted the Yngling [International] status in ... May 1979. ... IYRU status has given the Yngling class many positive things. The class rules are under constant surveyance and have improved to near perfection. The status of official World Championship makes those events more important, and we have seen and increase in entries and a higher standard of racing than ever before. I believe the Yngling class is attractive to good sailors, not only because it is a good boat, but also because they meet good competition and also the friendly atmosphere they find under the wings of IYA. ~ Jan Herman Linge