Uffa Fox was born on the Isle of Wight in 1898.

Uffa Fox was one of the first to belive that if a sailing dningh had the right shape, meaning a flat bottom, and was correctly balanced by its crew, it could be made to plane. This theory proved right with the design of the international Fourteen Fotter Avenger.

Further Uff Fox was always on the extreme side of designs, trying to squezze every possible advantage out of the design rules. He designed a sailing yacht under the 22 sqyare meter rule named Vigilant, that had such light displacement the the “Q” class in the UK refused him to race with them in the Solent. But Vigilante was allowed to race with the square meter yachts in Sweden so it was successfully sailed there back and forth in strong summer winds. So Vigilante was aviously a strong built boat even if it had such light displacement.

Prior to WW2 Uffa Fox had established him well as a designer of dinghys and it was here that he had the greatest success with designs as the International Fourteens and Eighteens and the  National Twelves

Uffa Fox became more publicly known outside of yachting circles through his yacht racing with British Royalty. He and the Duke of Edinburg raced togheter in the Dragon Blue Bottle, the royal at the helm and Uffa Fox crewing, and at the same time he raced his design The Flying Fifteen with great success during Cows Week.

The flying Fifteen was to become the most succesfull desing post war from Uffa Fox. It  was a 20 fot keelboat with planning capabilities. The desing was later expaned to include larger versions such as the twenty and the thirty.

Uffa Fox died in October 1972. Trinity Church at Cowes was packed for the service. A memorial service at St Martin In The Fields London was equally packed and attended by amongst others the Duke of Edinburgh.

Famous designs by Uffa Fox:

Vigilante
Flying Fifteen