Top Club gathers pace

The Crewsaver Top Club championship is one of those great ideas that seems so obvious you can't imagine why no one thought of it before. Seeing as the vast majority of dinghy racing every weekend takes place in handicap fleets at sailing clubs around the country, why not hold a national championship of club racing?

I first wrote about Top Club some months ago when Emma Harris and Pete Vincent launched the idea. Since then it has gained a title sponsor - Crewsaver - and 25 clubs having entered and another 10 on the verge of signing. The team format is simple, bring three boats - one slow, one medium and one fast. For instance you could field a team consisting of a Mirror, an RS200 and a Fireball. If you want to find out which category your class fits into, click on the website at: www.topclub.org.uk

The website also lists the clubs that have registered an interest in taking part, and I noticed there were quite a few major clubs that appeared not to have signed up. So if you haven't already done so, Queen Mary, Datchet et al, pull your finger out and enter a team, pronto! At other clubs however, competition just to get into the team has been fierce, with some clubs running a selection series over many weekends just to determine who will be their proud representatives at Grafham Water on 18/19 September. And some clubs are so keen that they want to field two teams at the event. This has to be one of the great spin-off benefits of an event like this, to create something for club racers to aim for each year, a sort of Olympic Games of club racing.

Of course, if you want to win this event, then you're going to have to pick your classes carefully. If you happened to read my article about handicap racing six months ago, you'll recall my advice to race a development class if you really want to do well. Having experienced just what an effect on speed the T-foil rudder has on the International 14 for example, a 14 would be an excellent choice for the fast handicap slot, as the class PY number of 850 has not really caught up to reflect the incredible pace these boats can now generate.

Laggard Lasers

And on the other hand, the last boat you'd want to field for the mid-handicap slot would be the Laser, the poor man of handicap racing. This is something I've mentioned in the past and it strikes a chord with Jerry Rook who wrote to me recently about his experiences at Lyme Regis.

"One topic comes up again and again at our club bar at Lyme Regis," says Jerry, "and that is the poor handicap that Lasers get (I must stress that I am not a Laser sailor but we have plenty of them at Lyme to bend our ears). It is noticeable that we have good sailors who have a boat in another class in addition to a Laser - and they stand as good a chance of winning as anyone in their 'other' boat, but they never win a handicap race in their Laser. Lasers rarely if ever win our club races and you never hear of them winning open water handicap events eg The Bloody Mary, Tiger Trophy or Starcross Steamer."

Jerry puts forward an interesting theory as to why this might be. "Most sailing is done
on restricted waters and those clubs largely set the PY number. Laser sailors
are probably above average in starting, wind shifts, mark rounding, and so on - all of
which count for a lot on restricted waters and so they sail to their handicaps. However when they come to a large open water venue, inherent boatspeed counts and the boat is in effect unfairly handicapped by the inland water skills of its sailors."

That's a very good thought, but I wonder if the Laser is really having that much effect inland either. I'd be surprised if they are. Perhaps all Laser sailors should join forces by deliberately sailing slowly and incompetently for the next 12 months, until the club returns to the RYA Technical Office start to reflect a slower handicap. Then, on the appointed day, all Laser sailors could start to sail quickly again (provided they could still remember how to) and then perhaps one day, just one day, a Laser sailor might actually win something!

Old Larks

Last year the Lark class scored quite a coup with their Old Boys event, where many of the big names of yesteryear took up the invitation to battle it out at Stewartby Water SC. This year, Emma Harris tells me it is the turn of the Old Boats to have their special event at Stewartby, on the 21/22 August. The weekend serves partly as a short-course championship for the modern fleet, but is also being billed as a battle of the vintage Larks, with free entry for any boat with a sail number older than 2030. The class is even running tuning sessions for crews with vintage boats. Yet again the Larks have come up with an idea that doesn't really cost anything other than creativity and good organisation. It's easy to keep looking out for the sailors at the top of the tree, competing on the open meeting circuit, and forgetting about the huge numbers of other sailors in your class. The Larks have hit on a formula that should make the less competitive sailors feel more welcome.

It's a variation on the theme that National 12s came up with, and on which I reported in a recent Rolltacks. Their idea of offering special PY handicaps for vintage 12s is particularly appropriate for development classes where older boats don't stand a hope of competing on equal terms with their more modern sisterships. It is certainly an innovation that other development classes such as the Merlin and International 14 could consider. 

Help the aged

But perhaps it is an idea that even some one-designs would do well to adopt. In a similar vein of grandfathering older designs, the 18-foot skiff class has just begun to allow the older Bethwaite-designed hulls to compete on a racing circuit originally aimed at the newer Murray-designed hulls. While the Bethwaite hull is reputedly quicker in some conditions, it is nigh on a decade since the last Bethwaites were constructed, so any hull shape advantage they might possess is likely to be more than offset by the ravages of time.

To take the idea a step further, perhaps the Fireball or Enterprise classes (to take two popular examples) could offer incentives to owners of older boats to compete at their events, whether it be a two-minute head start at the beginning of each race or having a separate division for boats below a certain sail number. The 49er class is currently debating on its website forum whether competitors should be allow to race on equal terms with the sports rig. This is a smaller sail plan, around 85% of the full rig, which is aimed at lighter or less experienced teams wanting to get skiff sailing. I say that such initiatives should be encouraged. If you're getting more boats to your open meetings than you can possibly cope with, then you can start dividing the class into different categories. But until that point, why not broaden the appeal of your class and make it as easy as possible for sailors to take part?

Owner drivers

This is what the Larks have done so well. They were a class dying on its feet in the mid-90s that has since been rejuvenated by an energetic committee with great ideas. The Musto Skiff is another class that is breaking the mould in a different way. I don't know what sort of energy drink these Musto sailors are on, but they evangelise about their boats with a fervour that would put the Hare Krishnas to shame. This is quite unusual in a strict manufacturer one-design class. With the best will in the world, other manufacturers have taken on nearly all the management of a class, with the intention of enabling their customers to turn up, go sailing, have a great party, and go home again. The trouble with that approach is that you have not asked the sailors to invest their heart and soul in the class, in a way that the successful older one-designs such as the Fireball have done. But somehow Devoti Boats have convinced their customers to do much of the work for them, and the sailors have been more than happy to go forth and preach the gospel according to Musto Skiff. And there's no more powerful form of marketing than word-of-mouth recommendation.

A nice little event that boatbuilder Dave Ovington and Dave Hall put together was an invitational regatta for nine Musto Skiff sailors to compete at the North Shields Fish Quay Festival. Each boat carried the logo of a local business - a pub or a restaurant, for example - and did some short course racing in front of the gathered crowds. Because the spectators could identify with the local sponsors there was some real interest and excitement generated. In the end it was the usual suspect, Richard Stenhouse, who prevailed, although the former Olympic Finn representative is finding it increasingly difficult to keep the likes of the strong Geordie contingent at bay, notably Ian Trotter and Kev Anderson.

That's the other thing about the Musto Skiff class, is that it seems to be gathering a following the length and breadth of the country, not just on the South coast. Not only that, the class is gaining a serious foothold throughout Europe. It stands a very good chance of becoming an International class, at which point it could be considered for Olympic selection. If it ever wanted that of course. For some sailors, Olympic status is the last thing they want, as the prospect of substituting Saturday night beers and curry for rehydration fluid and energy bars doesn't really appeal.

Slow starters, fast finishers

But talking of Olympics, a huge congratulations to our 470 boys, although I have to admit that following Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield's progress through recent 470 regattas has been quite stressful. They seem to start slowly with some shocking early results, and then bounce back quite incredibly in the closing stages. Their last month has been nothing short of breathtaking, with a bronze medal at the Worlds in Croatia followed by gold in the Europeans in Germany. Consistency in the 470 class seems harder to achieve than in any other Olympic class. In fact I would go so far as to say that the Men's 470 is the toughest fleet in Olympic sailing, bar none. So a medal in Athens is far from guaranteed for Rogers and Glanfield, but they couldn't have created a better springboard for success than what they have achieved so far this season. In RYA-speak, they are well and truly in the ‘Medal Zone'. But if they sail the Olympics with their ‘slow start/fast finish' approach, I don't know if the heart could stand it!