PSA Heritage "55"

PSA Heritage “55”

Built to Order, contact us for more details. 

The Heritage 55 is a celebration of a unique dinghy design with our historic builder relationship. 

PSA has been building dinghy for the past 55 years, and the Heritage "55", which is only being manufactured as a limited edition in 2025, is a celebration of our boat-building history. The PSA Heritage "55" is a tribute to the fact that over 200,000 lasers have been built and sailed worldwide.  

The Heritage “55” is available to order in a choice and combination of deck or hull colours, and a choice of rigs either as the ILCA  4,6 or 7 rigs. Each dinghy comes with unique Heritage "55" branding. 

Hull colours available are;  

To enquire about availability and pricing for your Heritage “55”, contact us by clicking here.

Heritage 55 history

In 1969, the Weekender was sketched while Ian Bruce was working for a camping & outdoors equipment company developing new products after he dropped out of McGill University, where he had been studying production engineering. He asked his then friend, fellow International 14 sailer and Olympian Bruce Kirby, for ideas on a car-topable sailing dinghy. Some sketches were produced, but the company did not choose to proceed. 

Sometime later, Ian Bruce left that company and started Performance Sailcraft 2000, building Int14s. He soon realised that there was not much of a future for him or the sport if it had to rely upon individually commissioned boats. He thus started to think about a mass-produced, one-design sailing dinghy that could be produced in his facilities.

Around this time, Seahorse, a magazine Bruce Kirby worked for, announced a "Tea Cup" regatta to find a cheap boat (I think they may have had in mind a home build). We don't know how much Bruce Kirby prompted this. The Weekender sketches were pulled out, but the sketches had a rounded & reverse transom, which was not suitable for fibreglass, which Ian Bruce had in mind. By this time, Bruce Kirby had moved to New York but, in any event, was not local. Bruce Kirby seems to have produced some hull line drawings and sent them to Ian Bruce. Ian Bruce threw up some frames, including a vertical transom, bent a bit of timber over them to establish a "fair line", and got on with building the hull.

When it came to the deck, he shaped it to both form the deck and stiffen the hull.

For the spars (because by this time, Bruce Kirby was there and Hans Fogh, another Olympian & sailmaker, was involved), they were guided by stock tube sizes & car roof rack load overhangs. The sail was made by Hans Fogh (who managed the Elverstrom loft) & they went to the "Tea Cup" regatta. On Saturday, the boat sailed by Hans Fogh did not perform well as the sail was cut like a Finn sail, so it was recut overnight. The boat performed well and was awarded the regatta prize, part of which was that it was to be displayed at the New York Boat Show.

A second prototype was built with a mast slot to enable them to experiment with mast position and rake. A third prototype was built using the mast position established by prototype number two & built slightly heavier. The prototypes were given binary designations, either 00, 01 & 10 with production starting with decimal 11 or 01,10 & 11 with production deemed to have started with 11. In any event, I understood 11 was sailed for a long time by them, and that was the boat that is the Maritime Museum in Kingston. 

Ian Bruce conceived the Laser as a moderately priced, strict one-design class where the competition was between the helmspersons.