There some very good bald-headed sailors around, and over the past couple of weekends I've had the privilege of sailing with two of Britain's finest.

Britain's best known bald dinghy sailor is Geoff Carveth, for whom I crewed on a rather hairy (excuse the pun) outing in the International 14 the other day. Geoff and I had never sailed together before - except for one abortive attempt at sailing a 49er at Littleton Sailing Club in a Force 5 to 6. If you know Littleton then you'll wonder what on earth we were thinking of. It is very small, and very shallow, too shallow to fully lower your daggerboard. Being surrounded by trees from almost every side, the breeze is not the most predictable. Not the best venue for a 49er, but we must have provided great entertainment for anyone watching.

Anyway, this time would be different, because it would be in an International 14 on the wide open waters of Hayling Bay. The boat was a Bieker 4 which Geoff will be guest-steering at the upcoming 100th anniversary Prince of Wales Week in Cowes at the end of August, sailing with the boat's crew and owner from America, John Vincze. Geoff invited me along as stand-in crew for a day of training.

As it happened, a number of top young sailors from the 29er and 49er fleets had been invited along to take part in a trial, to determine which of them would earn the right to take part in POW in borrowed International 14s. The aim of the weekend was to introduce a few up and coming sailors to the joys of the 14, and what better way than to throw them in at the deep end, with a race out of Chichester Harbour and into the wilds of Hayling Bay?

After a mediocre start off the line, Geoff and I started getting into our stride, but as we headed out of the Harbour and into the Bay, it was clear the breeze was quite a big stronger than we'd anticipated. The rig was bouncing around all over the place, and the brand new T-foil rudder system hardly needed to be pulled on as the boat was already threatening to submarine into the backs of some typically steep Hayling waves.

We capsized during one of the tacks, and lost ground to the leaders. We got upright again quickly, but the boat felt sluggish. It felt so awful that we decided that it was worth me going into change a few things - pull up the daggerboard, increase the rig tension, pull on some jib Cunningham. Once we'd done this and I'd got back on the wire, the boat really wanted to pick up and go, and we started closing in on the opposition again. We crossed the finish line in about 5th place after a long windward slog.

The plan had been to regroup, before the race committee sent us off on the next leg up to Bembridge off the eastern tip of the Isle of Wight. A four-mile beat, after what had already been a three-mile beat! From there the plan was to reach over to the Nab Tower far offshore, before reaching back to Chichester Harbour. But with the wind and the waves quite a bit bigger than expected, and with a whole bunch of new recruits discovering Fourteening for the first time, the race committee decided the Nab Tower marathon would not be sensible, and so they sent us back to Chichester Harbour.

Now, bearing away in a 14 is not usually too difficult, provided you remember to release the T-foil rudder before doing so. We did remember, but when we bore the boat away, the bow went down alarmingly and it looked like it was never going to come up. Eventually, after a lot of green water piling through the cockpit, we did tame the beast. Geoff and I looked round at each other with a mix of amusement and concern. The brand new T-foil was not behaving itself. Even on full release, the wings were not providing enough angle to sink the transom and lift the bow. No wonder we hadn't felt the need for too much T-foil on for the beat!

Now we had a three-mile run home to shelter, in what would usually be lovely big waves to surf on. Now Hayling Bay looked like a minefield. Geoff and I attempted another bear away, and this one didn't go so well, perhaps because we'd been spooked by the first one. We nosedived and capsized. It would be the first of many! Eventually we found a flat spot, got the kite hoisted, and with Geoff trapezing and me sitting right at the back of the bus inside the windward gunnel, we managed to limp downwind, with me either ragging the kite or dramatically oversheeting it, doing anything to prevent the boat building up to full speed.

At last, many capsizes and swims later, we made it back to Chichester Harbour and headed straight back to Hayling to lick our wounds, beaten back in by every other 14. Ben McGrane and Olivier Vidal were in before us, but baffled by how anyone could ever gybe a 14 without capsizing. Ben and Olivier are two highly accomplished 49er sailors, so they were a bit put out that they couldn't tame the beast. They were even more put out when they discovered that another rookie, talented 29er helm Frances Peters with crew Neale Jones had gybed without capsizing. But then as we discovered at the Youth Nationals earlier this year, Frances has a habit of beating the boys at their own game.

Back to us old folk, though, and Geoff, it transpired, had taken a nasty gash on his head during our swimathon of the past hour. His baseball cap had long disappeared, so he had been without head protection for our battle with the 14.

Being bald can make sailing a risky business. Wearing a hat is a good idea, as a bald pate gives you none of the warning signs that a good head of hair does. But Geoff tells me that your average baseball cap can in itself be quite a risky item for a bald man to wear. Pretty much every baseball cap you ever see has a big metal stud on the peak of the cap. Apparently, if during a gybe the boom skims over your hat and makes contact with the metal stud, it goes thwack into the top of your skull, leaving you with a nasty little indentation and a not-inconsiderable headache. Things that we folk with a full head of hair just don't need to worry about. But some food for thought for baseball cap manufacturers out there. It appears there is a gap in the market for a studless baseball cap for baldies like Geoff.

So, hats off to our best known bald sailors, the Geoff Carveths, Ian Walkers and Jez Fanstones out there. They cope with a whole set of dangers that the more hirsute among us never have to worry about.

 

Another talented baldie is Andy Budgen, who is perhaps not as well known as 10 years ago when he conquered the Laser 5000 class with his brother Ian (slightly more hair), before they moved into the 49er class where their best result was 2nd in the 1998 world championships. While Ian moved into professional sailing, joining GBR Challenge for the America's Cup and then doing the Volvo Ocean Race aboard Pirates of the Caribbean, Andy retired from full-time sailing to build his property empire in Southampton. Now he sails a Sigma 38 for fun, although he's still in demand as an Olympic coach to overseas 49er teams.

I've sailed with Andy a few times before and he is one of the best out there, even now. He asked me along to do a weekend's racing in the Laser SB3 as part of his build-up to the much anticipated King of Cowes regatta, first prize a £40,000 Volkswagen Touareg. With boat owner, the strapping young Alec Russell doing bow, and me sitting in the middle, we were on a fast learning curve. Neither Andy or I had sailed a Laser SB3 before, although Andy has a knack for very quickly picking up what makes a boat tick.

He is extremely fussy about jib-sheeting. I guess it was all about what he could feel through the rudder, getting the boat balanced up so it tracked through the water nicely. In the end he had Alec pulling the thing in as hard as it would go, basically sheeting it like an Enterprise jib. It seemed to work. Boatspeed seemed as good as anyone's in the fleet, although SB3s are so similar in speed it's hard to tell. They are a great boat, and it's no wonder the class has taken off like wildfire over the past couple of seasons.

They are not the most refined of boats, but they're very functional and the racing is even. Downwind they go pretty well for something with a big lump of lead hanging off the bottom. As someone said, the SB3 is a keelboat upwind and a dinghy downwind, which is a pretty fair description. It plods along upwind at about 6 knots from a Force 2 upwards, and can probably almost match windspeed downwind in light to moderate conditions, getting somewhere north of 20 knots' boatspeed in a good breeze.

The other thing that impresses me about Andy Budgen is his sixth sense for knowing how close to the line he is. I'm a stickler for getting a transit on the shore whenever possible, but Andy seems to have an innate sense of where the imaginary dotted line is, even when he can't see the ends of the line. We got excellent starts most of the time, which is gold dust in a fleet where boatspeed is even and every metre is hard fought. Laser SB3 hasn't quite tempted me away from the exhilaration of high-performance skiff sailing, but it was nice to be able to watch the race unfold in slow motion for a change, and to able to track the windshifts on a compass without worrying about keeping the boat upright.

Also, three is a very nice number. Two crew is great, but three is better. In fact some teams, including Geoff Carveth's, sail the SB3 four-up, which you're allowed to do provided you come in under the 270kg max weight limit. You can have some really good banter going between three or four of you, and there's an added team work element that comes into it with an extra person or two. It's a shame there aren't more three-people dinghies around. Of course, there's the 18-foot skiff, but somehow I can't ever see that going mainstream! I'm thinking more of a three-person GP14 or RS400. Well, I suppose I'm talking about a Laser SB3 without a big lead stabiliser under the water. But the lead bulb, in the end, is part of what makes the SB3 so popular. It is a great leveller, in every sense of the word.