Back to the sharp end

I was looking for the quiet life this year, looking to spend a low-key year just taking the RS600 out for the odd sail. But then I heard Martin Jones was looking for a crew for his new 14. Martin won the 14 World Championships back in 1991 with Duncan McDonald crewing for him (actually they had to share the title with Jon Turner and Zeb Elliott, as there was no system for breaking a tie). So I thought I'd ask Martin if he'd have me for his crew, and if he said yes, I'd worry about the consequences afterwards.

He said yes, and now my muscles are aching. Having spent the last six years holding a carbon tiller extension at the back of a 49er, there hasn't been much call for muscles. That's the great thing about steering a skiff where the crew holds the mainsheet; to an outsider you look quite athletic but the reality is that physically it's one of the easiest jobs in dinghy sailing.

It's been nine years since I did the hard work at the front of an International 14, and that's probably nine years too many. But with all the frenetic activity surrounding the class right now, I couldn't bear to sit on the sidelines. Martin hasn't sailed the 14 for over 10 years, so we're both a bit wide-eyed about it all at the moment. He's just traded in his classic wooden 50-footer for a 14-foot carbon bucking bronco, so for him the culture shock must be even greater.

Ovington built the boat, a Bieker 4 design, which was then sent down to Lyme Regis for Chris Turner of Specialized Marine to fit out. It was very exciting to see the boat arrive at Hayling Island for our maiden voyage. Compared with the other 14s there, our new boat looked pristine. I couldn't imagine how the other sailors had let their boats - barely a year old - get so shabby. But I found out soon enough.

Within 50 yards of leaving the shore, we capsized to windward, to the great amusement of Hayling onlookers. Less than 15 minutes after that we had hit the ground and trashed the immaculately finished daggerboard. They say when you buy a new car you should get the first scratch in early, so you stop worrying about it, and we had done that in fine style. It was a bit more than a scratch though. But that's one of the hazards of sailing in Chichester Harbour, especially when a 14's daggerboard draws close to 5 feet when it's fully down.

Our first competitive outing was at the Easter Tray, hosted over the Easter Bank Holiday by Itchenor Sailing Club. It started well enough with a third place but went badly downhill after that. However, we haven't yet put the T-foil rudder on, so we still have that excuse to fall back on. That said, Martin and I are rapidly coming to terms with the fact that getting back in the 14 really is like going back to sailing school again.

Green Gremlin Strikes Again

Our latest outing last weekend dealt us a harsh lesson when we snapped the top foot off the mast while travelling downwind at pace. We're not really sure what we did wrong, as it was one of the moments when we thought we were actually sailing the boat quite well. But it occurred to me afterwards that I had in fact made an elementary error, and not taken the advice from one of my Rolltacks columns of last summer.

Avid readers will recall the heavy price I paid, or more accurately the leg of my 49er crew Nick Murphy paid, for using green tape on our boat at last year's 49er Europeans. I made a similar error in the 14, although this time it was using that indescribably ugly green-and-yellow striped electrical tape. Who on earth came up with such a repulsive colour scheme? Not being an electrician, I may well be unaware of good practical reasons for such a nasty colour combo. It may well be an electrician's best friend, but as far as boats are concerned - leave well alone. It wasn't even as though I hadn't been warned. Fellow Fourteen crew Dave Dubrovnik took one look at the offending PVC and with sharp intake of breath and much sucking through the teeth asked me if I was not being a little foolhardy attaching it to the boat. I ignored the warning, and paid the price a week later, in shattered carbon.

It turns out that Dave is way more superstitious about the colour green than I have ever been. This is probably due to the fact that he hails from the West Country and can probably count smugglers amongst his ancestors. He told me all sorts of reasons why green doesn't go with boats, and I have made a mental note of his paranoia. He and helmsman James ‘Flossy' Fawcett are the form boat in the 14 fleet right now. They won the Bloody Mary this year and I think they won every race of the Easter Tray regatta. If Martin and I can't beat them with superior sailing skills, I'll have to leave bits of green tape strewn around their foredeck and inside the buoyancy tanks.

But back to our own problems. After just a fortnight since launching the boat, the damage tally stands at: mashed daggerboard, torn mainsail, broken mast. Welcome to 14 sailing. Luckily, we have had some electric moments in between the crashes and capsizes, enough moments of enlightenment to remind us why we're doing this. 14s are just plain good fun.

Lennon's Law

Actually, Mike Lennon, another 14 veteran who's made a recent return to the class, has a theory on this. He has a formula that goes: ‘the amount of fun is inversely proportional to the length of the boat'. I have to agree with this. It's why, for my money, dinghy sailing is way more exciting than yacht sailing. The smaller the boat, the more immediate the experience. But I think there is also a sweet spot somewhere around 16 feet, about the length of a 49er, a Fireball or a 505. If you go bigger than this, say to a Flying Dutchman or an 18-foot skiff, you still get the speed but you start to lose the immediacy. It's a bit like driving a bus or a juggernaut at high speed. If you go shorter than 16 feet, such as the 14, then it's a bit more like driving a sports car, not very practical but great fun. Go any shorter than that, to a Cherub or a 12-foot skiff, then that's just plane crazy. I'm hoping to get a ride in one of the twin-wire Cherubs currently on class trial, so just how crazy I hope to find out quite soon.

But take Mike's theory to its logical conclusion, and the Optimist would be the most thrilling ride in the sailing world, and somehow that just doesn't quite seem to stack up. Then again you can't fault the Optimist for getting kids out on the water. No boat does that quite as well as the Oppie.

At the other end of the age spectrum, the Laser has done wonders for masters' sailing, with the annual Laser Masters Worlds promoting a high level of racing for the over-35s. Now being eligible for the Apprentice Masters category (35-45), I had half a mind to give it a go myself, but then thought better of it. There are some frighteningly good sailors in that category; from this country alone, people like Mark Littlejohn, Steve Cockerill and Nick Harrison. No, for the time being I'll still to being an old man in a young man's class.

I wasn't aware the Finns also had a thriving masters following until I saw a press release for this year's event, set to take place in Cannes in the first week of June. With 210 boats already entered, the Finns look set to beat the Lasers for attendance figures. There are also some nice touches to the event, including having an 80-year-old French veteran Didier Poisson as the pathfinder for the gate start. Poisson came 2nd in the European Championships during the 1950s and represented France at the Melbourne Olympics, 48 years ago!

An added incentive for competitors is the prospect of winning a brand new, Olympic-spec Finn in a lottery prize draw. It was Devoti boatbuilder Tim Tavinor's idea, and Tim convinced North Sails, Harken and HIT Masts to pitch in and help him produce a ready-to-sail boat which could be donated to the event.

Kiwi Calamities

There would be some sort of justice if a Kiwi sailor could win the free Finn. They've had terrible bad luck with their own this past year. Firstly, there was the very public disintegration of NZL-82, Team New Zealand's much vaunted stealth boat, during the America's Cup. Then, last summer, you may remember I reported on a batch of brand new 29ers that left for Auckland bound for the 29er World Championships in Northern Spain - only to be discovered a month later in the South Island - of New Zealand.

Now it seems a similar fate has befallen 49er campaigners Adam Beashel and Ed Smythe (coincidentally, it was Team NZ strategist Beashel who shouted "big wave" just before NZL-82 slammed into a big wave, and then gave a big wave goodbye to its carbon mast during race 4 of the America's Cup).Anyway, Beashel and Smythe flew out to Athens recently for the 49er World Championship, expecting to find their race-prepared boat waiting for them after its container journey from Auckland. But it seems the boat was swallowed up in the same Bermuda Triangle that accounted for the 29ers, and the team were forced to charter a spare boat at the last minute.

The 49er may be a relatively strict one-design, but being denied the chance to race your own boat is not a formula for success. The irony of Beashel and Smythe's situation was that their task was relatively straightforward, due to the fact that they were the only team aiming for the New Zealand 49er berth. All they had to do was finish in the top five nations that hadn't already claimed a place on the start line at the Olympic Regatta this August. For a team of this calibre, this should have been an easy enough task. Albeit they hadn't been sailing together for very long, but in their time Beashel has come second in the Worlds and Smythe has won it, crewing for Chris Nicholson.

But down in Athens, having narrowly missed Gold Fleet, they found themselves locked in a battle for the one remaining Olympic berth with the top Swedish team, the Haas brothers. The Haas brothers prevailed by a measly six points, a deficit that the Kiwis would surely have overcome if they had had access to their own boat. And yet...

And yet... there may be one final glimmer of hope for the Kiwis.

Apparently this is because the Swedish national authority requires its athletes to be able to fulfil a minimum level of competence in order to justify being sent to the Games. The Haas brothers may not have done enough to get the call-up, which is very sad for them, but their misfortune might just be the reprieve that the hapless Kiwis are looking for. They deserve a bit of luck.