Elite One Design - What's in a name?
by Elite One Design Class 21 Feb 01:15 PST
Team Musto, RS Elite © Paul Wyeth /
www.pwpictures.com
On February 10th 2026 the Elite Class began an exciting new chapter with RS Sailing agreeing a handover of the manufacturing rights, enabling the Elite Class to move forward independently.
Launched in 2004 by RS Sailing, the Elite is a three-person 7.4 metre (24ft) keelboat designed for the 21st century by Phil Morrison with a brief to create a modern version of the classic racing sailboat in the spirit of the X One Design, Sunbeam or Swallow. It is a strict one design class, ensuring close and competitive racing.
While the original group of owners were waiting to see the prototype and for delivery of their boats there was much discussion of many things; exact specifications, colours, and of course, the name. RS had mainly given their boats numbers but with some exceptions, and so a name was always a possibility.
Many ideas were put forward, some possibles and some not at all useable. For many months ideas went backwards and forwards but there were no real favourites.
Two of the original groups of owners had owned various Lotus cars over the years and in a chance discussion about various of these they both agreed about the prettiest ever Lotus, possibly the prettiest ever car of any marque was the Elite from the fifties. Anyway, that was the Eureka moment and RS agreed.
At the same time, syndicates were thinking up names for individual boats and for a short time we all managed to include the letters El in the names but that didn't last beyond the Hayling boats. As a result of the need to think up individual boat names one of the things that happened during the waiting for boats period was that there were many social events, we even held a golf day before anyone had sailed a boat. Dinner parties were even held to decide between 'Fidelity' and 'Infidelity' (as a boat name!).
Fast forward 22 years and the discussions on choice of name began again. Shall we retain our identity or take the opportunity to reinvent ourselves? A few people felt the name was 'elitist', whilst others liked the fact that the name had a 20 year heritage. Hayling Island Sailing Club often had four Olympians club racing, is that 'elitist' or does that show that top sailors want to race this 'cracking' keelboat?
We settled on Elite One Design, a recognisable name which clearly describes what we are. We are proud of our RS pedigree and we look forward to many more years of competitive one-design small keelboat racing.
If you would like to find out more about us and where we sail then see www.elite1d.org