Cherubs fly closer to heaven

With the adoption of twin trapezes in recent years, it was inevitable that someone would want to get their Cherub up and flying on foils. Well now Andy Lang has become the first UK Cherub sailor to do so. His boat Aquamarina was the first UK Cherub to use a pitch-controlled 'T' foil rudder successfully and now it seems that she will be the first to fly on foils.

There are two schools of thought currently in the UK Cherubs when it comes to foiling. There's fully foiling and then there is the more pragmatic school of ‘reduced displacement foiling', as the Cherub sailors call it. Phil Alderson, the builder and original owner of Aquamarina, was the first to go down this path a few years back. The idea behind the theory is to recover some of the energy through the T-foil, ie to surf your own manufactured stern wave, and secondly to support the weight of the crew and reduce displacement. Although never ultimately successful at the Nationals she was a fast boat and spurned on several other members of the class to go down this RDF (reduced displacement foiling) route, notably Andy Paterson who employed his foil to pip Ben Brown and Daryl Wilkinson in 'Loco Perro' at the 2005 Nationals.

So now it seems the next stage has been reached in the foil debate, with Andy taking on the challenge of fully foiling his UK Cherub. Will it be ultimately successful? Let's see how it works out. David Spragg has already been fully foiling with his International 14 in this country, and there are a couple of Swiss sailors who regularly sail their 14 in foil mode on Swiss and Italian Lakes and claim to have exceeded 30 knots. In fact it is so fast and so scary that they wear crash helmets, and they say the boat is at its fastest downwind when sailing without the gennaker. The apparent wind is so enormous that the boat actually sails slower with the gennaker hoisted, because it is too big and too full for the job.

A foil too far?

The question the Cherubs must ask themselves is whether allowing full foiling would be a good thing for the health of the class. It seems to have worked well for the International Moth, with all the publicity and attention to the class that it has brought, but it is something the International 14s have actively stayed away from. We've got our T-foil rudders for the ‘reduced displacement foiling' effect, and this has enhanced the VMG of the boat upwind - both in terms of speed and pointing ability - as well as increasing the speed downwind. Not only that, but it has made the 14 an easier boat to sail than it was 10 years ago, when nosediving and pitchpoling were a perennial problem, although as you may have read in the last Roll Tacks two weeks ago, it is a problem that can still rear its ugly head from time to time!

All in all, the T-foil has made the 14 a faster and safer boat to sail, but what would a fully foiling 14 be like? I'd love to find out sometime, as there is no doubt it would make the boat a lot faster. But with Chichester Harbour being the stronghold of 14 sailing in the UK, it would be a foolish move to adopt fully-foiling technology. With 30 boats buzzing around the Harbour on a busy summer's day, it would inevitably lead to a ban by the Harbour Master, and it we would have to find somewhere else to take our hi-tech toys.

While the Cherubs are not so focused around one sailing area in the way that the 14 fleet is, the class has to be aware that as it gets faster so the number of potential venues for sailing the Cherub diminishes. This is already the case for the 18-foot skiff, which limits itself to precious few venues around the country, because of the sheer size and speed of the boat. A foiling Cherub I suspect would be a fair bit faster than an 18-footer, so the class would be unable to sail on any but the very largest of inland waters, such as Grafham, Rutland, Derwent and the like. Then again, the Cherub is one of the few genuine development classes in existence, and it is great to see people like Andy Lang taking things to the next level. With any major innovation like this, however, you have to accept that what might attract some people to the class will alienate others. I suppose it's all about working out what your class stands for and the purpose it serves in the dinghy scene.

To boldly go

A boat that has certainly played its part in the UK dinghy scene is the Enterprise, a great pond sailing boat. But much more than that too, as this next story will reveal. Thanks to Roger Fulton's excellent report for www.yachtsandyachting.com, which I've borrowed heavily from in the story below.

In 1956 E1 and E2, the two Enterprise prototypes emerged from Jack Holt's Putney workshop and were sailed across the English Channel on a cold, windy January night. They went in January to promote the new dinghy during the boat show at Olympia, and two of the sailors hadn't even seen an Enterprise before. They set off at night, to break the news for the next day.

At 8am on Saturday 10 June 2006, 12 men and one woman gathered in a car park next to Dover Marina. It was the culmination of 18 months' planning and cajoling to ensure the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Enterprise was properly celebrated. Two more Enterprises repeated the feat, except this time they not only sailed to France, but promptly turned round and sailed back home again. Fifty years ago the 21-mile one-way trip took 7hrs 20 mins (from 3.29am till 10.50am). The birthday crossing took 4hrs 15mins from Dover to Calais and a gruelling 6hrs 30 to get back.

The original idea belonged to keen Enterprise sailor Paul Young. At an Enterprise Association committee meeting early in 2005, talk turned to how the class's 50th was going to be properly marked. ‘What did they do 50 years ago?' asked Paul. ‘Sailed across the Channel? Then that's what we should do.' Life has become a good deal more complicated in the past 50 years however, now that we live in a world ruled by health and safety, and all other form of regulations. Reports of a Laser sailor being threatened with arrest on landing on a French beach didn't help matters. Others thought that as the Enterprise was not classified as an offshore dinghy a crossing would not even be allowed. Even the RYA questioned the wisdom of the venture.

Three people kept plugging away - Phil Kirk, Paul Young and Keith Tyler. Paul and Keith offered their Enterprises for the trip. But the main stumbling block was finding some escort vessels for the trip. And then they got lucky. Keith found a company on the web which, for upwards of £1250, had provided escorts for hundreds of cross-channel swimmers, plus assorted canoeists, kayakers and windsurfers who wanted to make the trip. The company had also accompanied an attempt by a bouncy castle with two outboards on it, but it barely got off the beach.

And so with several other Enterprise enthusiasts pitching in, the crossing attempt went ahead. As the boats were rigged that morning, Keith and Paul outlined the plan. They and their crews would start and finish the crossing, with the other volunteers taking turns to helm and crew. Those not on the Enterprises would be close by on Mike Oram's pilot boat, Gallivant. Glen, meanwhile, would hitch up the trailer, catch the 10.50am ferry, and meet the boats in France for a nice moules, frites and a glass or two of wine, before returning to Dover on an afternoon crossing.

So, after stowing everyone's kit aboard the Gallivant the team wheeled the Enterprises on their launching trolleys down to a slipway on Dover beach. Paul and Charles launched first, with Keith and Graham straight after. Official start time 9.16am. In a stiff SE breeze, force four or five, both planed away towards the harbour entrance escorted by Gallivant's rib as the rest of the team made their way back to the Gallivant to meet them offshore.

Roger Fulton, one of the support team, comments: "As we cruised out on Gallivant the breeze was stiffening - and on the nose - and the sea was getting lumpy. Suddenly, beating to France in an Enterprise didn't seem such a romantic notion. We caught up with the others about four miles offshore. Charles said later they'd had an exhilarating plane out for a couple of miles, before starting to point up on a heading of around 140 degrees. With the tide initially expected to push us west of Calais, the plan was to maintain this course before tacking as the tide turned to help us back into Calais on starboard tack - handy if we needed to pull rank on a ferry!"

It was also planned to take two-hour stints, but after 90 minutes, Mike announced that they were making such good progress that the boats could be in Calais before everyone had had a go, so it was time for the first changeover. Good progress was made in a gentler swell, with both boats able to free off a bit as the wind backed more easterly. A further uneventful hour and a half passed, by which time the French coast was looking nearer than the English one. After another change over and a further ill-judged attempt to swap places ended with a splashy capsize, the boats finally made landfall on the western end of Calais beach, about two and half miles west of Calais harbour, at 13.31 hrs.

Roger says: "By this time it had been decided to go for the double crossing and I'd like to say the return leg was exciting and full of incident. But alas, the wind fell away dramatically, and the last two miles took a miserly two hours."

It was painstaking progress as the Enterprises tacked along the shoreline. Even so, it looked as if Paul and Charles had at least 30 minutes advantage over Keith and Graham. But as E22901 slowed even more near the beach, E22322 took a more offshore line into better wind and was gaining rapidly as the two boats finally rolled out of the gentle surf at 8.04pm - six and a half hours after leaving Calais.

It was a frustrating way to finish, but what an adventure. Hats off to all the sailors and support team that made this challenge happen. Roger comments: "We'd all been part of something special, a nostalgic adventure, but with a character of its own. We'd not only crossed the Channel one way, we'd crossed back over again. We'd set out to remake a little bit of history and had ended up creating a new slice of Enterprise folklore all our own."