Whirlwind Romance
Now I love imaginative excuses for sailing badly, and I reckon I've got one of the best ones going. We've just completed the Datchet Winter Warm-Up, and there was one particular race where we were leading at the windward mark in the 49er. As my crew Nick Murphy ran in to hoist the kite, I could see a nasty swirl of dark water edging towards us. I yelled for Nick to join me on the wire as I bore away to position the boat for take-off. And then wham! The gust hits us from to leeward, gybes us and throws us into windward. As we drag ourselves on to our upturned hull, I see two Laser 4000s on port and starboard get wiped out by the same whirling dervish.
So where did it come from? About three or four hundred feet up, from the wing of a Boeing 747 just taking off from Heathrow, about four miles down the road. "Yeah, right," I hear you say, but it's true, it really does happen. And they're not always bad. Sometimes these vortices (I think that's what they're called) can help you out. I was doing a 49er open at Datchet about a year and a half ago when one of these things picked us up and gave us a 200-yard boost away from the chasing pack, only for us to lay our spinnaker all over Chris Draper who, even when we were side by side, was not feeling even the slightest effect of the vortex. They are highly localised mini-tornados that can make or break your day. I strongly recommend going down to Datchet to try them for yourself.
A Wing and a Prayer
Rather than relying on the unpredictable effects of jumbo jet wings, International 14 sailors are getting their thrills from winged rudders. In fact these wacky - and not inexpensive - rudders have been around for a few years now. Traditionally the pioneers in the class, the UK and Aussie fleets were very slow to catch on to this, following two successive Worlds wins by two different American teams, who both used so called T-foils to win first in Beer in Dorset in 1999 and again in Bermuda 2001.
The next logical step from there was to fit a lifting foil to the centreboard as well as the rudder and get the whole boat hydrofoiling above the water. One 14 in Perth has experimented reasonably successfully with this, but the class sensibly decided to draw a line by limiting wings to one foil or the other, but not both. Even now, though, there is plenty to learn with just the winged rudder and American designer Paul Bieker (the originator of the adjustable T-foil) has drawn his latest version, the Bieker 4, specifically with the T-foil in mind. Upwind, the wing is raked up to lift the transom out of the water and get the nose in, and downwind the T-foil is let off to neutral or even raked downwards to help clamp the transom down and lift the bow out on a windy, wavy run. This has allowed Bieker to specify a much sharper and less draggy bow on the new boat which might have been prone to nose-diving if it weren't for the winged rudder.
Ovington is currently building the new design, with the hulls being finished off and kitted out by Chris Turner of Specialized Marine down in Lyme. Meanwhile, Phil Morrison has drawn his latest design, the Morrison 11, for Richard Woof to build, whilst a Frenchman Xavier Boileau has built his own female mould in order to produce a boat to his own design.
There is a frenzy of activity in the rush to be ready for the European Championships due to be held at Hayling Island in June. With the proliferation of new hulls, masts and sails, not to mention new teams on the block, it is a tough call predicting a winner for this event. Paul Vine and Dave Dobrijevic transformed the performance of their Bieker 2 design with the addition of a T-foil last year, winning Prince of Wales Week and the Europeans. With Dave working for North Sails, this team will be one of the first to take advantage of the first ever 3DL sails to be used in the class. Anyone who follows the big boat scene will know just how dominant 3DL moulded sail technology has proven in recent years, with every America's Cup syndicate using the technology. Whether it offers a similar advantage in small boat racing we will have to wait and see.
Paul and Dave certainly can't expect to keep their T-foil advantage for much longer, as anyone with any serious intentions for the championship will be using one. Zeb Elliott and Tim Hancock are back on the scene after a year's break, and will be campaigning one of the new Bieker 4s, whilst the Morrison/RMW camp is well represented by the likes of Rob Greenhalgh, Ian Pinnell and Mark Upton-Brown. Victor also expects strong contingents from Denmark and Germany, along with one or two teams from Australia and Canada.
Sailors planning on doing the Worlds as well as the Europeans will get only a few more weeks to play with their toys before they get packed up and shipped off to Japan, for what is expected to be a light airs championship. So there is precious little time for development in the class this year. Whoever wins the Europeans could well carry their advantage through to Japan for that reason.
The Warming Pan will be the first opportunity to see some of these new designs racing in anger, so it will be interesting to see if a new pecking order emerges.
Carbon revolution
Carbon masts and booms have become de rigeur in development classes like the 14 and the Merlin, but I didn't realise just how many traditional classes were adopting carbon until I spoke to Superspars' boss Ken Brackwell. Having established his reputation with a range of aluminium masts over the past couple of decades, Ken is forging a new niche in carbon mast manufacture.
In fact he now supplies carbon sticks to 21 different classes, including the likes of two venerable old singlehanders, the OK and the Contender. I'm sure Ben Lexcen, the late great designer of Australia II, would be only too delighted to hear of his Contender adopting lightweight technology. My first experience of carbon was back in the mid-Nineties, crewing for Chris Sidey in his 14. The first time we stuck a Roger Angell carbon mast (8 pounds unrigged) in the boat, we could feel the difference straightaway. Not only did it make the gybes safer and easier, with less inertia up top, it also dramatically reduced the pitching moment of the boat. In fact we found ourselves standing six inches to a foot further forwards on the gunnel, just to get the bow back in the water.
I voiced my reservations about other classes like the Fireball adopting carbon, a couple of Rolltacks ago, but Ken makes a convincing argument for change. He acknowledges that in the UK a carbon mast generally works out at twice the price of the aluminium equivalent. Interestingly it is only about 10 or 15 per cent more expensive for a customer from abroad to buy a carbon mast compared with aluminium. But before I could accuse Ken of car industry price fixing tactics, he explained that any mast is expensive by the time it has been shipped abroad, with all the packaging, shipping, duty and tax that goes with that. Foreigners pay a good deal more for an aluminium mast than we do. We are fortunate that Superspars and Selden - the two leading dinghy mast manufacturers in the world - are based in the UK, but the trouble is, it does then make carbon seem that much more expensive.
But not prohibitively so, a Fireball mast fitted out but with no rigging, at the moment retails for £321 plus VAT. So Ken's ball park estimate for a carbon version is £650 plus VAT, which I think most people could stomach. The weight saving would be significant, with the bare tube weight reducing from its current 6.5kg to around 60 per cent of that, say 4.0kg approximately. What really surprised me, though, was when Ken told me carbon masts would last much longer than their aluminium equivalents. Now, having seen the number of mast failures that occurred in the early days of carbon in the 14 fleet, that seems hard to believe. But Ken says that one of the problems - or advantages - of carbon is that it is very easy to make a mast in your garden shed. Unlike aluminium masts, which require several thousands of pounds of tooling-up costs, carbon manufacture can be very much more straightforward. However, Ken claims it is the "bucket and spade brigade" who have been tarnishing the reputation of carbon by building masts of variable quality.
Superspars make their masts on round-tube mandrels. I'm afraid I didn't dare ask what that meant, but suffice it to say Ken has absolute confidence that his masts are coming out very consistently. For some classes like the 505, which is on the verge of re-adopting carbon after banning it in the early 80s, Ken is no doubt it makes economic sense to change. "The 505s would definitely win out because they break so many metal masts. The class doesn't have a minimum mast weight, and they seem to be led by performance at any cost. Most classes wouldn't put up with that level of breakage, but they're so used to their masts breaking that they don't seem to question it any more. They would definitely profit by changing to carbon.
"People still perceive carbon as more unreliable, but it's not. Aluminium will only stretch 8 or 9 per cent before it permanently distorts, and it will probably break at something like 15 per cent of stretch. Carbon bends enough to absorb the energy. Think about the way carbon fibre fishing rods bend, there is no way they could make those in aluminium. There's just a learning curve here for people to realise."
In fact, Ken thinks carbon could be quite bad news in the long run for dinghy mast manufacturers. He estimates around 5 per cent of aluminium masts break each year in racing classes. With carbon he reckons the breakage rate could be as low as 1 per cent.
15-rated 18s
I think the carbon trashing rate might be a little higher in the 18-foot skiff class, judging by the latest video to come out, Smack Down Under. It tells the story of how the Great British skiff, RMW, snatched defeat from the jaws of almost certain victory in the JJ Giltinan Trophy, the unofficial World Championship that takes place on Sydney Harbour every January. You get the strong impression that this is not the story that they intended to tell, but cameraman, director and editor Iain May has constructed a fantastic story out of the highs and lows of Team RMW's week.
Onshore, we follow the progress of brothers Rob and Pete Greenhalgh, and their trusty middleman Dan Johnson. The banter has to be heard to be believed. Iain May has shot it like a Tarantino movie, with the blood, the dialogue and the music to match. The blood comes from Dan Johnson's head, an injury he picked up during a mid-gybe nosedive in training before the regatta. The dialogue comes mainly from front man Pete Greenhalgh, at times fluent, at other times merely effluent. He will have you cringing, smirking, and just plain wondering what the hell he's talking about at times, but there are some memorable lines to savour, too.
Pete's vanity muscles are also well on display in the boat park, so there's something for the girls in this show too. But some of the language - especially Pete's description of Dan's gash - you really wouldn't want your mother to hear. This video has been certified a 15 certificate, so you have been warned.
Part sponsored by Richard Woof, the man who built and funded their yellow skiff, and marine equipment manufacturer Holt, you will also encounter some of the most crushingly obvious product placement you've ever witnessed. It's so bad, it's good. The same goes for narrator Vicky Butler-Henderson's script. The language in the script has all the hallmarks of being put together by 'the lads', but coming from a woman's voice - who can barely contain her laughter - it sounds all the more cheesy. Listen, and laugh.
But by far the biggest stars of the show are the boats themselves. I could just sit all day and watch these things sailing. I was out in Sydney last year spectating, as Howie Hamlin took his first skiff world title in real life, but I think watching this one on video was better. And instead of having endless commentary running over the top of the racing, Iain May lets the footage speak for itself, gently helped along by some cool background tunes. Every so often, Vicky will come in with a quick couple of lines to help the story along and then you're back into these beautiful, mesmerising sequences of skiffs flying across the Harbour.
The story of the regatta takes a while to come together, but in the last half hour the action gets quite gripping. Even though you know the outcome, it's impossible at times to see how it could ever end that way. It looks like the Brits have got it in the bag, but this video goes to show that when it comes to boat racing, it's never over until it's over.
