The Five-Ohs are coming out in force for the 40th anniversary 505 World Championships at Hayling Island. By early July with a month to go to the regatta, there were 132 entries registered, with a number of notable foreign teams including 1999 World Champion from the USA, Howie Hamlin crewed by Jeff Nelson. Swedes Ebbe Rosen and Olle Wenrup and Philippe Boite/ Fabrice Toupet from France will also be ones to watch.

However Wolfgang Hunger and Holger Jess will not be coming from Germany to defend their title, which they won in 2001, 2003 and 2005. Maybe being an even year they figured they wouldn't win. So in their absence, and it being on home turf, can we see a World Champion from the UK? The last time any Brits won the Worlds was back in 1997, when Mark Upton-Brown and Ian Mitchell took the title in Denmark. Being Hayling Island members, Upton-Brown and Mitchell have been tempted back into the 505 to see if they can repeat the feat before a home crowd.

Their 1997 victory marked the end of a purple patch for British 505 sailors of which four different teams won the Worlds during the mid-1990s. Since then the Worlds have largely been dominated by German and American winners, but Ian Pinnell believes that with a mix of conditions the Brits stand a good chance of winning at Hayling.

"Unless we see a really light-air regatta, when some of the light-wind specialists might come through, then I think the Brits could do well," says Ian, possibly one of the best 505 sailors never to have won the Worlds. Sailing with regular crew Steve Hunt, Ian has high hopes for success this time around. He is using a Rondar hull, a Selden Cumulus mast, a carbon-fibre, high-aspect gybing centreboard, and surprise surprise, a set of Pinnell & Bax sails!

The gybing centreboard has gone in and out of fashion in different classes over the years, but for the 505 Ian says it is a must-have piece of kit for anyone serious about winning. Ian's board only gybes when it is fully lowered, and as soon as he raises it the case holds the board stiff in the centreboard case and it reverts to being a standard centreboard.

Gybe-Oh Five-Oh

Ian says the difference between a boat with or without a gybing board is chalk and cheese. The boat with a properly working gybing board will lift out on the conventional boat, sailing higher by a couple of degrees and at pretty much the same speed. It works particularly well on flat water through a range of conditions, but for the choppy waters of Hayling Bay, Ian doesn't anticipate having his board in gybing mode in anything over 10 knots. "If you're leaping off waves then you don't want the board slopping around in the case, and you never know, the board could even go on to negative gybe for a moment," Ian explains. So while others persevere with the gybing board in higher winds, Ian chooses to revert to conventional mode for overpowered conditions on the sea.

Never having used a gybing board it's hard to imagine what it must feel like sailing with one. It doesn't sound very appealing having a board that flops around in the case but I guess you wouldn't complain if it made you faster. It makes me wonder if there is something to be said for a board that is also capable of being held in negative gybe for running or reaching at deeper angles downwind. I'm sure there are good hydrodynamic reasons why this might not work or be desirable, and I'm sure that if you know better you will do the favour of letting me know. You usually do!

Two other British teams to watch are Ian Barker/ Danny Cripps and Paul Brotherton/ Magnus Leask. Barker won the Worlds in 1993 before moving into the 49er class where he pipped Brotherton for the Olympic slot in 2000 and went on to take the Silver medal with Simon Hiscocks, another former 505 sailor. Brotherton has only ever dabbled in the Five-Oh but with his strong background in 470s and 49ers he is one to watch if he has managed to conjure up some good boatspeed.

14s getting faster

The performance of Archie Massey and George Nurton's new International 14 has got tongues wagging in that fleet. The Itchenor-based team won Prince of Wales Week at Parkstone Yacht Club, and more importantly won the National Championships, the winner-takes-all competition known as the Prince of Wales Cup. Sailing their brand new Bieker 5 design (with a few tweaks here and there), Massey and Nurton showed some devastating pace in winds up to 10 knots - and unfortunately for the 14s there was rarely more than that in a hot week where the sea breeze refused to come out and play.

The jury is out on their performance above 10 knots, however, and with boats about to packed up in containers for the 14 Worlds in Los Angeles this September, we probably won't know just how well they are going until then. But they have found some real light-wind magic with a combination of innovative ideas on their smart new boat. It is hard to pinpoint which of them is giving the team such good pace, although probably the answer is that it's a little bit of many things put together. The shroud base is wider, with the mast anchored from the edges of the trapezing racks as opposed to on most boats where the shroud attachments are a few inches further inboard on the gunnel. The wider shroud base and longer spreaders probably allow them to support the mast more efficiently, meaning there is less compression through the carbon tube. It also allows them to carry higher forestay tension - and therefore less jib sag - for the same amount of shroud tension as other boats.

Then there are the high-aspect, narrow-profile foils. They must be a pain in low-speed manoeuvring, when it's hard to get the flow attached on such thin-profile foils but judging by the pace they displayed both upwind and downwind there is very little drag coming off the rudder and daggerboard. Certainly the POW experience has been sufficient for James Fawcett and Dave Dobrejevic - who finished runner-up in both the Cup and the Week - to have some last-minute modifications made to their foils before their new Bieker 5 gets packed up for California.

The Brits really don't know what to expect when they get to the Worlds. It will be a meeting of three very strong continents all with very different approaches to making a 14 go fast. Much depends on the windspeed at Long Beach. The organisers say it is likely to be winds between 12 and 18 knots, but then that's what the brochure always says, isn't it! Having said that, this was the venue for the 1984 Olympic Regatta so the data for Long Beach should be reasonably reliable.

Massey believes that the Aussies, including reigning World Champions Lindsay Irwin and Andrew Perry, will still be the ones to beat if it is blowing 18 knots or more. For a start, Irwin and Perry are big lads and weigh in at a combined 28 stone or thereabouts, plus which they operate on relatively bendy, gust-responsive rigs.

At the other end of the spectrum are the Americans who are sailing with much stiffer rigs and big square-topped mainsails. 505 sailor Howie Hamlin is having a go, as is long-term 14er Zach Berkowitz who won a windy 14 Worlds in Bermuda 2001 when he used the then very rare T-foil rudder to devastating effect. The other weapon at Zach's disposal on that occasion was his crew Trevor Baylis. Whichever campaign Trevor gets involved with, success usually follows. Zach had been trying for many years to win the 14 Worlds and then won it easily when Trevor joined him. A few weeks later Trevor crewed an 18-foot skiff for the first time at the JJ Giltinan Trophy in early 2002 and became World Champion as Howie Hamlin's front man. Then in 2004 he raced a 505 with 49er sailor Morgan Larson and won the World Championships in a one-season campaign.

As well as being brilliant around the boat, Trevor is an extremely technical sailor. For the Worlds he is sailing with his diminutive wife Tina, who is no pushover when it comes to getting a high-performance boat round the track. Tina and Trevor were one of the fastest 49er teams in the late 90s and narrowly missed qualifying for the Games in 2000. Tina and Trevor are at the light end of the scale for 14 crews, but the fact that they are going for stiff rigs, big-headed mainsails and big jibs suggests they think Long Beach could be a light to moderate-air regatta. The Americans are also trialling gybing daggerboards - perhaps not surprising considering the strong 505 backgrounds of people like Baylis and Hamlin - so it will be interesting to see what they have come up with.

Somewhere between the two extremes of the Aussies and Yanks are the Brits, with medium-stiff rigs and moderately complex boats - as opposed to the super-simple Aussie boats and the ultracomplicated American boats. Aside from Massey/Nurton and Fawcett/Dobrijevic there are some other possible contenders including Mike Lennon and Jonny Blackburn sailing a RMW/ Selden/ Hyde Sails package, and also expected to be there in a RMW works boat is Rob Greenhalgh, recently back from winning the Volvo Ocean Race aboard ABN Amro One. Rob won the Worlds three years ago with Dan Johnson and given a moderately fast boat he has the ability to win again.

For all the fact that Long Beach is expected to be a go-right-up-every-beat speed track, good old seat-of-the-pants sailing ability remains a prerequisite even in a technical class like the International 14. Even at America's Cup level you see teams get carried away with trying to win the technology battle and overlooking the fact that you still need to get your boat cleanly and sensibly around the race course. The fastest boat will not necessarily win, although it can't be denied that the LA Worlds will provide a fascinating comparison of three continents' differing approaches to the challenge of making a hi-tech 14-foot boat go fast.