Thistle Fleet #69 was founded in 1955 and served as one of the founding fleets of the Indianapolis Sailing Club. Our fleet lists approximately 28 boats within its membership, has the opportunity to sail in approximately 68 club races and will host two invitational regattas this year. On the social side, our fleet meets formally at least three times a year, with additional spur of the moment get-togethers, as well as mingling with the other ISC fleets at club-wide events. Our fleet membership is very diverse, both in people as well as their level of competitiveness. We are privileged to have in our fleet, the winning skipper of the 2001 Mid-Winter's East Championship, Bruce King. Oh, by the way, Bruce also won, along with a couple of other regattas, the National Championship!

The Thistle was designed by Sandy Douglas in 1945 as a 17 foot, plumb bow, one design sailboat, that could be raced by two or three or day-sailed comfortably by as many as six people. Supported by a strong national association, the Thistle Class now has over 3900 boats built with nearly 90 fleets active nationwide. One amazing attribute of the Thistle is that older boats are still very competitive. It is not uncommon to find boats more than 20 years old, winning and placing well in major class regattas. In fact, Thistle #1 usually places in the top 10 at the Nationals: in 2001 it placed 7th out of 92 competitors and won the event in 1990.