For nearly 70 years, Flying Scots have been built by hand in Garrett County. Along the way, the boat has become part of the fabric of summer at Deep Creek Lake. Earlier this summer, I went sailing for the first time.
I had seen sailboats on Deep Creek Lake plenty of times, but I had never really given much thought to what was happening out there. I didn’t know there were races nearly every weekend throughout the summer, or that people traveled from other states to compete here. I definitely didn’t know that there could be a couple hundred Flying Scots scattered around the lake.
I just knew I had never been sailing and wanted to try it.
So when I had the opportunity to go out with Greg and Cheryl in their Flying Scot, I did. And as a first-timer, I got to experience exactly what the boat was designed to do: we could simply go out for a sail in it, while the same boat could be out racing on Saturday without changing anything. A short time later, I found myself standing inside the Flying Scot factory right here in Deer Park, Maryland, looking at the other end of that story.
Little did I know, my maiden sailing voyage was in a unique sailboat design that is made right here and revered across the globe.
Flying Scot President Carrie Andrews showed me around the factory just as production was beginning on the 2027 model year, which will mark 70 years since the Flying Scot was introduced in 1957. In the layup room, the first 70th anniversary boat was already taking shape. The process is surprisingly hands-on. The color is sprayed into the mold first, followed by a contrasting backing color that helps the crew see air bubbles as they work. Different types of fiberglass are then laid into the hull and wet-out by hand. The centerboard trunk and structural materials are added, the deck is built separately, and eventually the two pieces are brought together for assembly. At their normal production pace, it takes about two weeks from the time a boat is started until it is ready to leave the factory.
Even after seven decades, the boats are still hand-built and, more importantly, still built from essentially the same design. Flying Scot is a one-design boat, which means the goal is to keep every boat as identical as possible. The molds used today have been replaced over the years as they wear out, but each comes from the original master mold. Structurally, a new Flying Scot is still the same boat that your grandparents may have sailed.
That matters when you’re racing, of course, but it has also helped create a legacy around the Flying Scot. An older boat can still be re-rigged and get back out on the water. Carrie estimates there could still be around 4,000 Flying Scots actively sailing, and the company is now into production numbering sails in the 6,300s. They regularly hear from someone who has found an old Scot in a field or in a family shed and brought it back to life. That longevity goes back to what Flying Scot designer Gordon K. “Sandy” Douglass was trying to accomplish in the first place since he wanted people to spend their time sailing, not rigging.
The Flying Scot was designed to be relatively simple and stable, with a flatter bottom that doesn’t feel as “tippy” as some small sailboats. But it is also responsive and performs well enough to race. Carrie describes it as walking the line between a comfortable cruising boat and a racing boat, something she believes Douglass simply got right.
The Flying Scot was actually designed in Mentor, Ohio, but Douglass eventually decided to move his manufacturing operation. A friend suggested Western Maryland, pointing out the skilled craftsmen in the area, the beauty of the region and, of course, the lake. The company first operated in Oakland in the building that is now Fox’s Pizza Den. The location had one rather obvious drawback for a fiberglass boat manufacturer: it shared a wall with a beauty salon, and the salon’s customers weren’t exactly fans of the resin smell coming from next door.
Flying Scot eventually moved to Deer Park, where a building was constructed specifically for the manufacturing process and that factory remains there today.
Flying Scot builds only about 20 to 30 new boats in an average year, but the Deer Park operation does much more than new construction. The company has a repair shop, sells replacement parts and ships roughly 100 packages a week during the busy season.
A lot of time is spent helping people keep older boats sailing.
Rigging systems are available as kits with the hardware, measurements, photos and instructions owners need to update their boats themselves. The staff also spends time on the phone helping someone who has just purchased an older Flying Scot figure out what something is or how it works. Flying Scot Flying Scots at their Facility in Deer Park s at their Facility in Deer Park
“We’re very passionate about people using their boats and getting them on the water,” Carrie said.
And while boats began leaving Garrett County for sailors across the country, plenty of them didn’t go very far.
Deep Creek Lake became home to Flying Scot Fleet 6, one of the earliest numbered fleets in the class. Today, the boats are scattered around the lake, some owned by racers and others by people who simply enjoy taking them out for a sail. Carrie recalled that at one point her father went around the lake counting them and came up with more than 200.
From Memorial Day through Labor Day, Carrie said there are usually around 20 boats racing on any given weekend. A regular weekend includes a race on Saturday and another on Sunday, with larger invitational regattas bringing sailors and boats from outside the area. This year, visiting competitors came from North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin for one of those
events.
At the end of the season comes another Deep Creek tradition, the Magellan race. It brings back an older style of racing around the lake, sending sailors out with a map to find different zones rather than simply racing a typical course. “The sailing, of course, is awesome, but usually socializing at the regattas is just as much” a part of it, she said.
For Carrie, sailing has shaped most of her life.
Her father’s family came here from the Pittsburgh area and bought a lot at Thousand Acres. During one of their early summers, a neighbor invited her father to go sailing. He absolutely loved it.
Carrie said he spent the following day sitting at the end of the dock hoping the neighbor would come back and take him out again. Eventually, her dad and his brother convinced their father to buy them a sailboat. They started with a Sunfish before moving to their first Flying Scot, No. 2787, which the brothers raced actively during their summers at the lake.
Her dad’s interest eventually led to a summer job with Flying Scot while he attended college. After graduation, he moved to Garrett County, started full-time in the factory and worked his way into the office. In 1991, he and Carrie’s mother purchased the company from Eric and Mary Ammann, who had previously purchased it from Douglass. Carrie and her husband became the fourth owners when they took over the Flying Scot operation in 2019.
Through years, surprisingly little about the boat itself changed and Carrie believes that’s part of what makes the company unusual. Each new owner had worked with and learned from the one before, so even though it wasn’t technically being passed from one generation of a family to another, it evolved almost as if it were.
Carrie’s own connection goes even deeper since her mother sailed while pregnant with her and she began sailing (out of the womb) with her dad when she was about four. And, it remained something they did together even after she left Garrett County for college. Carrie’s parents met at a regatta. Carrie met her husband at a regatta. “It’s just been a thread that’s been woven through my entire life,” she said.
Now their children are beginning to become part of it, too.
One of the things I wondered after my first sailing experience was how someone who doesn’t already know a sailor gets into this world. Apparently, you can just ask.
The local Deep Creek Sailing School offers adult programs and individual lessons, with boats available for people who simply want to see what sailing is all about. There are also two active yacht clubs on the lake, and Carrie said both have communities of sailors who are generally happy to share what they know.
Very often, she said, if someone expresses an interest in trying it, there’s someone willing to take them out. My first sail was exactly the kind of experience Carrie says the Flying Scot was made for. Greg and Cheryl could take me out for a casual sail and then take that same boat racing. In fact, when Carrie was explaining the versatility of the design to me at the factory, she used them as the example.
The more we talked, the more I realized that versatility isn’t just the reason the Flying Scot has survived. It has helped the sailing community around it thrive, too.
People can enter at different ages and different levels of experience. They can race seriously or never race at all. Families can sail together, and the same boat can stay with them for years.
The day before my factory visit, Flying Scot had delivered a new boat purchased for a man who is still racing at 92. Carrie said the Scot’s stability and the way sailors can sit comfortably in it allow people to keep sailing well into their 80s and 90s.
She said it’s always difficult when someone finally calls to say they can’t sail anymore. “With a Flying Scot you can push that off longer.”
Maybe that explains the Flying Scot’s place at Deep Creek better than anything else.
For nearly 70 years, Flying Scots have been built just a few miles from Deep Creek Lake, and over those years, they’ve become a pretty familiar part of summer here. They’re raced, repaired, passed down and, for a lot of families, simply part of life at the lake.
Before I went sailing this summer, I really didn’t know any of that. I had seen the sailboats on the lake plenty of times, but I didn’t know about the people behind them, the history here or just how connected the Flying Scot is to Deep Creek.
Now, when I see those sails out on the water, I know there’s a much bigger story behind them. And I think it’s pretty cool that a boat built right here in Garrett County has helped create a community around Deep Creek Lake with plenty of fair winds ahead.