Inevitably it seems that class associations tend to be focused on the top end of the racing fleet, sometimes to the detriment of the rank and file club sailors that make up the bulk of most association memberships. Bucking that elitist trend, however, the UK Fireball Association is one example of an organisation that has done a very good job of spreading the love throughout its membership - regardless of sailing ability. The UK Laser Association also runs a very popular event aimed squarely at the club sailor. Indeed it is called the UKLA Club Sailor Championship, and even though it does what it says on the tin, some would-be participants are still confused as to whether or not they are eligible. The Association's training officer, Jon Emmett, says some sailors don't think they are good enough to go. The fact is, anyone is good enough to go, it's a matter of excluding those who are too good from going.

"This event is aimed at the weekend club sailor who doesn't tend to travel that much," says Jon. "The idea of the Club Sailor Championship is that we put on event that makes it worth their while to travel." Jon, who lives in Weymouth, is delighted that the event is coming to Castle Cove Sailing Club this year, on the weekend of 17/18 June. Jon will also be running a day's training on the preceding Friday to get people up and running ready for the weekend. "This may be the only time in the year that some sailors get access to some coaching," says Jon, "so the idea is to take them through some basic starting practice and boathandling routines."

Jon expects a fleet of 150 sailors to descend on Castle Cove for the Championship, although more would always be welcome. There is the added incentive that the winner gets to trade in their current Laser for a brand new one provided by the Laser Centre. So if you've got a Laser, get yourself down to Castle Cove, unless you:
  • Feature in the top 30 of the UK Laser Standard Rig rankings, or the top 20 of the Radial rankings
  • Have been to a Laser European or World Championship
  • Have previously won the Club Sailor Championship
  • Are a member of an RYA squad or are in receipt of Lottery funding
  • Have won a national championship in any other dinghy class over the past 10 years.
Jon is passionate about bringing the benefits of coaching and imparting the expertise of the few to the many casual Laser sailors around the country. "We've got about 2,000 members in the UKLA, so the aspirational sailors - the ones who receive funding to race overseas or who do the six Qualifiers each year - are a tiny proportion of the whole." Jon is one of those top sailors, and he battles it out regularly with Steve Cockerill and the half-dozen full-time women's Radial sailors who are working their way towards the Olympics in two years. So while he himself could be described as an elite sailor, his approach to his job as the UKLA's training officer is anything but elitist.

Attitude adjustment

Asked what the fundamental difference is between a top professional sailor and a weekend club sailor, Jon points out that practice is probably one of the biggest. Not just the time that the full-time sailors have to practise but also their attitude to it. While the full-timers will spend hours, days and weeks working on a tiny part of their game, many club sailors will never even do a practice start in a year's sailing. While for a full-time sailor the ratio of practice to racing is probably 9:1, for most weekend sailors the ratio is probably reversed.

Jon is keen to show that training - as well as racing - can be fun. He runs sailors through various drills to help hone their boathandling or tactical instincts. ‘River boat' is one that involves a triangle of three RIBs - one up front and one each side - that move forward and gradually squeeze together, forcing the sailor to tack ever more frequently as the ‘river' narrows. "It reaches the point where by the end you might be tacking every two seconds, so it gets harder and harder as you go along, but does sharpen up your tacking," says Jon.

One of the misconceptions among many Laser sailors is that tacking is all about getting from one tack to the other as quickly as possible. Jon asks sailors to see it another way: "Ask yourself what you want to achieve, because is tacking as quickly as possible really the aim of a good tack? Actually, it's to make as much ground to windward as possible while tacking. Quite often you'll see a sailor push the tiller over as hard as he can and then almost capsize as he comes out on to the new tack and struggles to cope with the power. A tack doesn't need to be as frantic as that, because if you steer through more slowly, you make ground to windward and you have more time to get settled into the new tack."

Gybing out of trouble

In Jon's view, having a coach viewing your sailing from outside the boat can speed up your learning curve immeasurably. An area where this is especially the case is in the gybe, and helping people avoid that good old Laser quirk of getting the mainsheet caught over the transom. You might have thought that the answer was in giving the mainsheet a timely flick just as the boom starts to fly across, but Jon believes this is often what leads to the mainsheet catching in the first place. His answer is that as soon as you start steering into the gybe you should also start pulling in the mainsheet as quickly as possible. The more you can sheet in the less likely it will be to catch on the transom. Combine this with a timely windward roll of the boat, and the boom should go across without a problem.

Jon says that in the light to medium you can afford to roll the boat quite aggressively through the gybe, even to the point where the end of the boom hits the water as you complete the gybe. This probably seems like the last thing that newcomers would want to do, as when the boom hits the water it must feel like you are half way to a capsize. But as your timing gets better you'll know just how much roll to apply to the gybe to get that mainsheet across cleanly.

Arm-over-arm sheeting is a foreign concept to some club Laser sailors but again Jon says it is well worth investing the time learning how to do this. Not only is it useful for sheeting in the sail before a gybe but also it can help get you round the leeward mark much more effectively. Jon says many sailors will pull in an armful of mainsheet, cleat it, pull in another armful, and so on. With 14 metres of mainsheet to come in from boom fully out to boom fully sheeted in, that could take an awful long time! Far better if you can learn to grip the tiller extension in the crook of your thumb and forefinger, leaving your fingers free to hold the sheet as you arm-over-arm the mainsheet into the close-hauled position in a matter of a few seconds.

What Jon offers on the Friday preceding the Club Sailor Championship is just a taste of what can be learned through coaching. What he would really like you to do is get in touch with him to arrange for some Laser coaching at your club. "There are loads of opportunities for sailors to get access to Laser coaching. We've got a regional training programme in place but not that many sailing clubs take advantage of what's on offer. If someone gets in touch I can find a coach who lives in the region or nearby to come down and run a weekend session for the sailors there." If you want to organise something for your club, email Jon at jonemmettsailing@aol.com or call him on 07748 902679.

RS & FD

In similar vein to the Lasers, the RS200 class is in the second year of its Gul RS200 Club Championship, which takes place on 16/17 September at Datchet Water Sailing Club. Top sailors from the Nationals and the Fat Face circuit are excluded, with the aim of encouraging club sailors to come along and compete for the Championship. For more information click on the club championship link (http://rsnationals.rs-association.com/index.asp?fleet=RS200&clselect=Club%20Champs), although the event might have finished by the time you've typed that lot into your web browser!

A boat that used to be aimed very much at the elite in its days as an Olympic class is the Flying Dutchman. These are beautiful, hi-tech machines that look like monsters to sail but apparently are much more docile than they appear, which is why perhaps they have continued to enjoy life beyond the Olympic grave. Thanks to their exotic construction, good Flying Dutchmen will go on for years provided they are well cared for. The class held its World Championship in Florida at the beginning of April where a Hungarian team, Szabolcs Majthenyi and Andras Domokos, dominated the regatta to count seven race wins and discarded another race win and a second place. They and the second-placed team of Hans-Peter Schwarz and Roland Kirst from Germany were both using the recently developed Selden carbon FD mast.

The carbon mast seems like an obvious upgrade for such a state-of-the-art boat as the Dutchman, but having said that, the price of carbon has skyrocketed over the past year. Selden UK's chief executive Zeb Elliott was telling me that the raw material has doubled in price in little over a year as supply races to keep up with growing global demand. Whereas a couple of years ago the cost of a carbon rig was edging ever closer to its aluminium equivalent, that is certainly not the case right now. No doubt over time the global production of carbon will increase but for now the spending power of big industries such as aerospace and energy is driving up the cost for the little people like us. Just bear that in mind as you're flogging the spinnaker on a tight reach in a Force 5!