“The Finn is the boat that taught me the most,” says Musto. After sailing the Cadet, Musto moved into the Finn dinghy in the early 1960s.

“Initially, I was 10½ stone, and 5ft 8in, so it was a bit silly. I quickly learned that you either master it or it masters you, and – being bloody-minded – I wasn’t prepared to let it master me.

“Being very light, we got up to everything you could think of. We made a leaf spring boom, so that at a certain wind strength the boom would start to ease the main in conjunction with the mast,” he recalls. Musto also developed a universal joint tiller extension fitting, which became the first version of the fitting used on thousands of dinghies since.

Photo: Clive Mason/Getty

The Finn was an Olympic class from 1952-2020, latterly the ‘men’s heavyweight dinghy’.

As Musto was light for the class, he instead had to try to outsmart his heavier opponents, a strategy which continued when he moved into the Flying Dutchman for the 1964 Olympics.

He also worked hard on strength and fitness, unheard of for sailors at the time. “We hadn’t got the weight, so we had to have stamina. And all of that stems from the Finn,” he recalls.

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Finn dinghy stats rating

Top speed: 15 knots
LOA: 4.5m/14.7ft
Launched: 1949
Berths: 0
Price: £5,000-£15,000
Adrenalin factor 80%

Keith Musto

Keith Musto is a legend of British sailing. He won the first ever Endeavour Trophy in 1961, and a silver medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo in the Flying Dutchman class. A life-long innovator, after the Olympics he set up Musto & Hyde sailmakers, then founded Musto, the specialist sailing and outdoor clothing company. He is still sailing, aged 90.

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