Metal Mirror Masts

While many classes have leapt into the beginning of the 21st century with the adoption of carbon in favour of aluminium for their masts, the Mirror dinghy is stepping up from wood to aluminium! The popular doublehander can now be raced with a conventional Bermudan rig. Spars for the traditional Gunter rig are made of wood but the modern alloy equivalent is cheaper, stronger and much easier to rig and maintain. You can still use your same Mirror sails with the new rig and upgrade in stages by getting the mast or boom separately.

Simon Lovesey, Mirror Class secretary explains the move: "We've allowed adoption of the new rig after three years of consultation and testing and we've had unanimous support for it from Mirror Class Associations around the world. The wooden parts were getting prohibitively expensive but the Mirror was always designed to be affordable. The traditional rig is prone to breakages particularly when tuned for racing. It also requires lacing of the gaff making it more complicated for juniors and no other popular dinghy has that sort of rig these days. For the future of the class to prosper we needed to move with the times and modernise it."

Now approved by ISAF, the new rig will race alongside its traditional counterpart in the Mirror fleet just as modern GRP Mirrors race against wooden hulls. So far, testing has not indicated that it's any faster, however indications are that it is fairer because middle ranking sailors will find it easier to tune their boats. There's also no danger of the gaff falling down and hitting people on the head. And there is the added bonus of being virtually maintenance free. Unlike with the wooden spars, owners won't have to spend time varnishing their new rig.

The alloy mast is available in one or two piece sections, so if preferred the spars can still be transported in the boat. For racing there's the option of a tapered top section to make the boat easier to handle in gusty conditions by crew in a wide weight range. Internal running rigging is also an option. Masts start at approximately £180 for a cruising version with a racing one at £259 and booms from just £55. Suppliers include Selden, SuperSpars, Trident and Z Spars but any spar manufacturer can supply one as long as it complies with the rules.

Full International adoption will commence on 1st Aug 2006; in the meantime UK sailors can apply for dispensation to use the new rig in class events up to and including Area Championship level. For more information about the change, go to www.ukmirrorsailing.com.

Hear the one about the Irishman?

Another boat that offers good value for money on the dinghy scene is the Lark, of which I have many happy memories racing in university team racing events as well as doing a couple of National Championships in the early 90s. It is a great boat to sail, one that rewards hard work and subtlety of boat and sail trim. Having gone into decline after a large part of the Lark fleet moved en masse into the B14 a few years ago, a new band of hardworking sailors pulled the fleet up by its boot straps and got the Lark back into the 50+ club for National Championship attendances. I thought things must really be progressing in the class when I noticed a recent race report on the web for the Lark European Championships. So even our neighbours across the Channel have seen the merits of the Lark, I thought to myself as I clicked on the link to the story.

Yes, with 25 British teams and er... 1 Irish team competing at the regatta in Dun Laoghaire in Ireland, James Stewart and Ruth Johnson were crowned Lark European Champions! Congratulations to James and Ruth who dominated the event with straight wins, but I hope they wear their European crowns at a jaunty angle, as I don't think anyone can expect to take the ‘European' bit too seriously if it involves 50 Brits and two Irish!

Half a Worlds

One team that definitely deserve the title of World Champions, however, are Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks. They sailed a very difficult and largely windless championship on a lake at the foot of the French Alps, near Aix-Les-Bains. Apparently the race officer made the best of a bad job with the lack of wind, but in the Gold Fleet final where the top 25 teams go through to compete for the overall title only six races were completed. Now in days of yore, six races - one race a day - would have constituted an entire regatta. But when you're competing on short, two-lap courses designed to last no more than 25 minutes apiece, you really want your World Championship to be decided on more than just six heats.

Now, Draper and Hiscocks have finished in the top two of every Worlds since 2002 (their scores read 2,1,2,2,1 for the past five World Championships), so no one could doubt the fact that they deserve their latest title. But when I spoke to Simon about his victory in France, even he admitted it wasn't the way he would have like to have won. "As a world champion, I'd like to say that it counts. But we've only done half a championship, in one wind condition. The title of world champion implies you're the best in the world. Well, maybe we are the best in the world, but we've only been tested in one condition, from 5 to 8 knots on flat water on a lake. You'd like to see a range of conditions, and in more than six races. Yes, we got a discard in, but there weren't enough races for people to have their bad ones."

The top teams from the Ukraine and Spain - the other two World Champions of recent years and also the Gold and Silver Medallists at the Athens Olympics - finished in 9th and 10th overall. The runner-up in the Worlds, a Greek team, have never got close to the podium in a major 49er regatta  before. Simon thinks with a longer championship perhaps things would have reverted a little more to the usual pecking order. "It starts easing itself out. The luck inherent in the sport evens itself out a bit. Even with a day to go, sometimes, you can look at the results and think, there's an upset here, but give it another final day and the same old faces start to appear."

But Simon also believes some sailors just didn't stay on top of their game psychologically. Turning up at 7.30 in the morning to try to catch the best of the morning breeze, and hanging around until sundown to get a couple more races in at the end of the day, took its toll. "I think quite a lot of people came here and said ‘this place is rubbish,' and sailed accordingly." The lake-sailing background of dinghy racing in the UK also stood them and the other Brits in good stead, he believes.

When only the best will do

However, it wasn't all smooth sailing for Draper and Hiscocks. In one of the finals races they finished dead last! "We made the classic error of trying to pass 25 boats in one go rather than one or two at a time. After a really good start we were lying about 12th around the windward mark. We'd just had three 2nd places which was pretty impressive, so we'd got used to being top three and so being mid-fleet it seemed like a disastrous race at the time."

Simon says they sailed down the favoured side of the first run but because the fleet was so bunched together, there was no clean wind at the leeward gate. They fell further behind. "We kept on throwing the gamble at it until we were last," he laughs. "It was doing our heads in. That evening we were sitting there, both saying, ‘I can't get that race out of my head.' Later that night I woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning and that race was still bothering me."

At this point, with all races to count, Chris and Simon were lying in 3rd overall. "We just had to hope there was another race for the discard to come in. We were desperate for another race." On the final morning of the regatta the wind looked reasonable, but not in the area the race was due to take place. "We thought, bloody hell, there's a conspiracy against us. The cut-off for the final race was 1pm and luckily we started a race at 12pm and then got two in. We scored a 5,2. It went from looking like we'd been really stupid to looking good again. As soon as another race started we were in good shape."

With six Finals races completed, the race officer then attempted to start a Medal Race with the top 10 teams set to do battle, but the breeze never settled and so Draper and Hiscocks won the Worlds for the second time in their careers. Meanwhile, Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes secured 3rd place behind the Greeks. This young team have shown a lot of promise for the past couple of years and have come close to the podium on a few occasions, but this is the first time they have medalled at a 49er World Championship.

So does this mean that they will join Chris and Simon on A Grade funding with the RYA? "It certainly fulfils a lot of criteria," Stevie told me, "so we'll have to see if Sparky [Olympic Coach Stephen Park] is feeling generous! I've just bought a new house, so a bit more money would go down very nicely." Things weren't going so well earlier in the week for Stevie and Ben before they came good in the Gold Fleet finals. "Yes, there was one stage earlier in the week when I thought, ‘I've only been in the house for a month, I don't want to be selling it quite this soon!'"

Stevie is always the joker, but don't let this fool you into thinking he doesn't take his sailing seriously. By coming top three in the Worlds, he has ensured that Chris and Simon's selection for the Games in 2008 is by no means a formality. "You've got to step up and do the business if you want to go to the Olympics for Great Britain. Chris and Simon have been achieving at this level for years, and that's what we need to start doing too." One way or another, the harsh realities of the one-team-per-nation situation in the Olympics means that yet again Great Britain will be leaving behind some truly world class 49er sailors. The same looks true in the Finn, where Ed Wright has swept all before him at recent Grade 1 Olympic regattas - save the fact that Ben Ainslie wasn't there. It seems that these days, to get selected for Team GBR you really do have to be Gold Medal material.