Few images capture summer on Fairfield County’s Gold Coast better than brilliant white sails and sleek, gleaming sailboats dotting the horizon. From Greenwich to Bridgeport, a thousand or more sailboats of every size and style ply the blue waters of Long Island Sound—in fact, all year round!
Supporting novice and experienced sailors are dozens of public and private boat clubs that provide education, community spirit and access to resources. In addition, active sailing programs are offered at a dozen secondary schools throughout Fairfield County—from public schools like Darien and Brien McMahon to private schools like Brunswick and Sacred Heart Greenwich.
The clubs and programs are crucial to providing sailing experiences that are both safe and fun.
Yet the problem, says Darien resident Karl Ziegler, is that “there hasn’t been a new learn-to-sail boat introduced to the market since the Ideal 18 over 30 years ago.”
He and fellow resident Bill Crane believe they have the solution.
The two grew up sailing out of the Noroton Yacht Club, where they not only honed their sailing skills but developed an eye for the details that enable a boat to move with greater speed and efficiency.
Ziegler’s first job after graduating from Yale was to coach the university’s sailing team. Crane served as CEO of a major manufacturer and distributor of dinghy sailboats whose North American office was in Norwalk. There, he had proposed a small keelboat as an evolution of the Ideal 18, an iconic keelboat “ideal” for beginners, as well as seasoned sailors, due to its safety and simplicity as well as its speed and maneuverability.
When the board at Crane’s company passed on the project, the idea lay like ballast in his mind until reconnecting with Ziegler several years ago.
“The whole idea was that there is an opportunity to give back to sailing by creating an institutional boat for yacht clubs, colleges and sailing schools,” Crane says.
In 2023, the two friends co-founded the Storm Marine Group to produce Storm 18—a fiberglass lifting keel sloop that fulfills the requirements of boat and yacht clubs, sailing schools and high school and university programs as well as for individual sailors. (The boat and company name come from Crane’s belief that the new company will take the industry by storm.)
The many different phases of creating the Storm 18. Clockwise from above left: The boat builder starts by cutting and shaping the hull before sealing it with epoxy and applying fiberglass in layers, The cockpit is then created, sealed and shaped. The finished hull includes the keel, which can be lifted to navigate shallow water without running aground.
The listing keel allows Storm 18 to be easily transportable and maintained by club or school staff. What’s more, with real estate on the Gold Coast prohibitively expensive and harbors on the Sound filling up and increasingly costly to dredge, a lifting keel allows clubs without access to hoists or ramps the ability to raise the keel into an upright position in shallow waters.
The Storm 18 is also highly stable and fun, appealing to fresh-cheeked junior sailors.
“It’s really very forgiving,” notes Ziegler. “It’s hard to get yourself into trouble and easy to get yourself out of trouble. And he adds, “It’s a really fun boat!”
Meanwhile, the boat’s nimbleness and responsiveness, quick acceleration and exceptional maneuverability make it marketable to sun-and-wind beaten old team-racers.
For them, there’s plenty of shop talk in Storm 18’s product copy, like 2:1 jib sheets with adjustable leads, traditional boom vang, ratchet blocks for spinnakers, jib halyard controls and so on.
What these and other features add up to is a sleek, modern sailboat that can hold as many as four people and serves a multitude of purposes.
This summer and fall, prototypes of Storm 18 will be demonstrated on beaches here and in several other states.
For more information visit stormmarinegroup.com or to schedule a demonstration, call 914-329-5047.