Mistaken identity
I bumped into Angus Hemmings doing a bit of big-boat sailing at the Swan European Regatta in Cowes earlier this month. I'm told he only gets these big boat jobs because people mix him up with his older brother Andy, who is well known on the professional racing circuit, most recently as a trimmer for Prada down in Auckland. Angus, on the other hand, sails for fun, mostly in the Fireball but also in the RS200 with his wife Claire.
Claire, however, is heavy with child and so the RS200 has had to go. But Angus has been allowed to buy a new toy in its place, so he will be going RS600 sailing instead. Having myself spent the last three months nappy changing, I was keen to compare notes with Angus on excuses to be able continue sailing whilst leaving our better halves holding the baby. It seems we both adopt the approach of being extremely grumpy and generally unbearable to live with unless we're allowed out on the water on a regular basis. In fact, Angus's approach is so successful it seems Claire is keener about him competing in the Fireball World Championships in Adelaide next January than he is.
Angus Steak House
Angus has now sailed Fireballs year in, year out since 1991, and he is by no means the only one to have shown such long-term loyalty to the class. "Maybe we're just a bunch of boring old gits that know each other too well," he shrugs, but his loyalty shows no sign of wavering, even though at twelve and a half stone he is a little on the heavy side for the back of a Fireball.
I'm not one of the lightest 49er helms around either, but there is hope for the likes of Angus and me in the form of the Phantom singlehander. It addresses one of the fundamental problems with most dinghies, which is that very few cater for big people. The Laser used to be seen as a heavy man's boat, but as sailors have got fitter and the rig has become more controllable with superior control systems the average competitive weight has come down.
Ghostbusters
The massive 10 square metre rig on the Phantom, however, guarantees that it will lug anything up to 18 stone of human around the course in a competitive fashion. Class representative Clive Mattson says this is the appeal for many Phantom sailors. "I get a lot of guys asking for details about Phantoms because they are in boats where they've got too heavy for them. They want something lively, and move to something that'll give them some fun."
Clive himself was a latecomer to the sport, having only taken it up after turning 40, but now aged 57 he says he enjoys the Phantom as much as ever. He says that while the average weight in the class is around 15 or 16 stone, an 18-stoner won the Nationals a few years back, and yet more recently he has also seen a good 13-stone sailor manage to be very competitive.
The last two years have seen the class attract more than 50 boats to the Nationals, and it is a sign of the Phantom's growing profile that Lawrence Crispin has joined the class this season. Lawrence won the Laser World Championships back in the mid-80s, beating Stuart Childerley to the title, but then narrowly losing to Stuart in the Olympic trials for the Finn in 1988. He then had reasonable success campaigning a 505 during the 90s, but it is interesting that he has decided to come into the Phantom for another go at singlehanded racing. A sailor of his caliber is bound to give reigning National Champion Simon Childs a run for his money at the Nationals in Saundersfoot at the end of August
Ready-to-race
Pinnell & Bax are the commercial driving force behind the class, with P&B's Nick Beloe an active sailor at the sharp end of the racing fleet. Like many of the national classes, traditional wood construction has given way to plastic moulded hulls, with the Phantom built by Vander Craft and fitted and finished by Pinnell & Bax. If you opt for the ready-to-race package, supplied with Proctor carbon rig, a Mylar P&B sail, trolley and covers, Clive says you are looking at spending £7,000. If your aspirations are more mid-fleet than winning the Nationals, then you can find a reasonable second-hand boat for £3,000 to £4,000.
Clive reckons the carbon rig has made the boat more responsive and more fun to sail, and with a Portsmouth Yardstick of 1051 she is certainly pretty quick for a hike-out singlehander. The fact that the Phantom is not a pure one-design allows plenty of scope for mucking about with internal layouts, and Clive says most sailors have "adjustable everything", with the rig able to be slackened off for downwind sailing. For the average club sailor who is perhaps getting too old or too heavy for the Laser, and who wants to spend a bit more time and money than the Laser allows on some boat bimbling and experimentation, the Phantom seems to offer a lot of the answers. Long may it stay in the 50+ club.
Death of DIY
One person who might regret the Phantom's transition from wooden, kit-built boat to off-the-shelf plastic package is Peter Bentley. Peter is never one to hold back his opinions, but if the world has seemed a little quieter lately it is because he is tending to do less yachting journalism, and more technical development work for the RYA's Olympic programme. Unfortunately, nearly all the work he does is too secret squirrel for him to be able to talk about, but he is clearly excited by some of the projects that he is involved in.
Peter loves to tinker around with boats, aeroplanes, computers, in fact just about anything that is put in front of him. He will roll up his sleeves and experiment and persevere until he has found a solution to the problem, and this is no doubt one of the reasons why is he in such demand with the RYA.
Peter believes the ability to maintain, repair and tweak your own boat is a dying art, and he blames much of that on the time poor/cash rich culture that has driven the growth of plastic, off-the-shelf boats. "People of my generation - Jo Richards, Derek Clark, Sid Howlett - we all built model aeroplanes, took motorbike engines to pieces, restored old cars. Very few people from the younger generation have done that stuff, which ends up producing an enormous vacuum in the technical education process.
The keyboard generation
"This stuff was second nature for people of an older generation, but the youth of today, if it isn't connected to the keyboard, they don't know how it works. It is a really big issue because whether you like it or not, sailing is a technical sport. Paul Henderson [ISAF president] says Olympic sailing should not be a technical race, it should be man against man. But there's no getting away from it, boat tuning has and always will be an essential part of sailing. If you subscribe to the view that Olympic sailing should be detechnicalised, then you don't want to get involved, because it's only going to get more technical."
The trouble is, there is no formalised way for sailors to learn this technical stuff. Perhaps it is one of Russell Coutts's great advantages that he studied engineering to a high level, and he has taken that technical knowledge and combined it with a superb sailing mind to become the dominant force in America's Cup competition. Perhaps the best example outside sailing is Michael Schumacher, who may be the most talented and hard-working driver of his generation, but who has also demonstrated the most understanding of the inner workings of his racing car.
Benetton Renault won two Formula One world championships with Schumacher at the wheel in the mid-90s, only to fade away to obscurity almost the moment he transferred his allegiances to Ferrari. And then it was Ferrari that was to reap the rewards of Schumacher's technical excellence, breaking a quarter-century drought in Formula One to score three championship victories. Wherever Schumacher goes, technical success follows.
Trial and error
Iain Percy credits his coach Sid Howlett with instilling an understanding of the first principles of sailing, which means he can test ideas in the Star against a background of knowledge rather than going through the more laborious and often fruitless method of trial and error. But there are few Sid Howletts about, so the rest of us have to resort to more hit-and-miss methods to find that boatspeed edge. One of the best, and most fun ways to broaden our knowledge and understanding is by chopping and changing through different classes and learning the different lessons that each type of boat can teach us.
But that is only one part of the equation. The other is having the skill and confidence to work with the materials, such as two-part epoxy, carbon and glass fibre, gel coat, woodwork, metalwork, and all the other things that go into boat construction. My inability to make a brass-handled screwdriver in metalwork class at school set the tone for my subsequent approach to boat maintenance, as any of my sailing partners will testify. I definitely fall into Peter Bentley's category of only knowing how it works if it's attached to a keyboard, although I would love to know more about how to use epoxy without gluing my hands together. What about a weekend workshop at a boatbuilder's yard, when the sailing season is over and when there isn't too much work on for the boatbuilder?
DIY SOS
One man who would be excellent for running this type of practical workshop is Ian Lovering. Not long back from Auckland, where he was one of the shore crew for GBR Challenge tasked with maintaining the winches and hydraulics, there isn't much that Ian can't make or fix. He was the boat technician for the Olympic team in Sydney three years ago, and he'll most likely play a similar role down in Athens next year. And he's not a bad sailor either, having won the 420 Worlds crewing for John Merricks and coming fifth in the 470 Worlds, also crewing for John.
The good news for us sailors in the south of England is that he's back running his repair and boat optimisation service Ashdown Marine, and it is a sign of his quality that he's been run off his feet from the moment he got back from New Zealand. He's had International 14s through his workshop, along with Nick Rogers' 470 and Shirley Robertson's Yngling, amongst others. So if the idea of doing it the Peter Bentley way scares you as much as it scares me, much better to give your beloved boat to someone who really knows what he's doing. Ian is contactable on 07971 922884 or by emailing: ianlovering@freeuk.com.
