Climbing the ladder

Mark Jardine, yachtsandyachting.com's editor, has assembled his annual analysis of attendances at national championships, and as usual it offers some interesting insights into the health of our dinghy classes. The youth classes always dominate the top of the hit parade, and once again the Optimist and Topper attendance figures put all other classes in the shade. The Oppie hasn't quite broken the 300-mark as it did last year, but 294 is a number that other classes can only dream about. And the Topper, despite having been around for a quarter of a century, seems to be gaining popularity by the year, with 246 a gain of 17 places on last year's championship.

The Cadet has been deposed from third spot by the rise of the Laser Radial, meaning that the top three spots are occupied by youth-oriented singlehanders. I know I'll be offending (or flattering perhaps) some Topper and Radial sailors who no longer qualify as youths, but a large part of their fleets are made up of sailors in their teens.

In fact, it's the rise of the singlehanders that is the notable theme of this year's chart. With 23 more competitors than last year, the original Laser singlehander has finally hauled itself back into the Hundred Club with an entry of 108 at this year's Nationals. This is the first time in a long while that the Laser has achieved this. The selection of the Laser as a new Olympic class for Savannah in 1996 was a double-edged sword, bringing the boat into wider public prominence but in this country at least, contributing to a dwindling in numbers on the national circuit. With the likes of the teenaged Ben Ainslie, Iain Percy, Hugh Styles and Andrew Simpson practising almost full time during the early 1990s and quickly getting to the front of the senior fleet, it's not hard to see why the weekend sailors decided to take their hiking shorts elsewhere.

Going Solo

Perhaps this explains the resurgence of some traditional singlehanders that have been around for a long time, and yet look like they might have their best years ahead of them. The OK is the stand-out success of 2004, having scorched its way up to 10th place with a Championship turn-out of 75, almost double last year's fleet and way ahead of her six-year average of 44, but helped in no small measure by the fact that the Worlds took place in the same venue the week after. For a more consistent performer, look to the Phantom which with 73 competitors was only two places and two entries behind the OK, a phenomenal achievement for a boat that is not that cheap, and yet seems to offer a good package to the heavier sailor. Former Laser World Champion and Finn campaigner Lawrence Crispin obviously sees enough there to keep his competitive juices flowing, and he won this year's Championship on tie-break from Alan Burrell.

Other notables in the Phantom Nationals included Contender guru Graham Scott and the multi-talented Jamie Lea. Jamie is best known these days for his Melges 24 sailing but for my money his greatest achievement was in finishing runner-up in two successive Weymouth Olympic trials. In 1995, he helmed a 470 to second place behind the world-beating John Merricks and Ian Walker who went on to win Silver in Savannah. And in 2000 he had piled on the muscle to come second in the Finn trials, behind Iain Percy. It would be fair to say that Jamie was never quite world class in either boat, but when you consider that the average competitive weight for a 470 helm is 65kg and 98kg for a Finn sailor, Jamie's ability to vary his weight is up there with Tom Hanks in Cast Away or Robert de Niro in Raging Bull. Jamie's ability to be competitive in bantam and heavyweight divisions was truly worthy of an Oscar.

Does size matter?

Anyway, I'm digressing, so back to Top of the Pops. The singlehanded trend is quite staggering, with the Laser 4.7, Contender, Splash and Streaker all making massive gains. Particularly impressive is the rise of the repackaged Blaze, up from a measly 18 boats last year to 43 in 2004.

A trend that isn't new but which never ceases to surprise me is just how the top 10 remains dominated by the older classes. The RS200, in sixth place with 91 entries, is the only boat to have been designed in the last 20 years. It goes to show that despite the proliferation of new boats over the past decade, the enthusiasm for older designs remains largely undiminished. It gives hope to some old favourites like the 505, whose numbers took a nose dive four years ago and haven't yet recovered.

There are very few high-performance classes at the top end of the charts, with the welcome exception of the RS800, which recorded its best yet attendance with 70 boats in Plymouth recently. It goes to show that twin-trapezing really can have mass appeal, and the 800 has proven an excellent platform for introducing weekend sailors to high-speed but manageable performance.

I've already mentioned one factor that can skew results, where a nationals doubles up as an international regatta. Another important factor is the effect that venue has on attendance figures. Generally, the further north you go, the lower the turnout, with the exception of some classes with very strong northern fleets such as the GP14. This is something I touched on recently when I was singing the praises of sailing in Scotland.

The other thing worth questioning is whether bigger is better. I would argue that for any class with less than 30 entries, more would always be welcome as it becomes difficult to run a financially viable championship with less than this. But in terms of enjoying your sailing, does it really matter whether you've got 40 or 80 boats at your championship? If you love the boat and you enjoy the company of your fellow fleet members, that's probably all that really matters. If you want to do some statistical trainspotting of your own, then check out the National Championships Attendance Table at: www.yachtsandyachting.com/default2.asp?section=44

Calculator required

One class whose attendance figures appear to yo-yo all over the place is the Flying Fifteen. The two-man keelboat bounced back with 46 at their Nationals this year, won by Charles Apthorp and Alan Green. Charles is a former Olympic campaigner in the Flying Dutchman, so perhaps is better acquainted than most Fifteeners with the arcane scoring system that I thought had died out years ago. It is the old Olympic scoring format, where the points for the first seven places in a race went: 0, 3, 5.7, 8, 10, 11.7, 13. One point was added for each subsequent place below 7th, so 8th place would get 14 points for that race, and so on. Confused? So was everyone else, which is why ISAF wisely ditched this scoring process some years back. How on earth were sailors meant to get their heads round that, let alone the non-sailing public? However, the merit of this system lies in rewarding the winner and other high finishers in the race with a disproportionately favourable score.

No doubt there have been Championship winners in the past that finished the week on 0 points, which must have been quite something. Rodney Pattison and Iain Macdonald-Smith came pretty close when they won the 1968 Olympic Games on just 3 points. But it's interesting that Formula One has also ditched its old system of rewarding only the top six in a Grand Prix and nobody else, in favour of a more equable system now. If they had stuck to the old scoring, Michael Schumacher would have won this year's Driver's Championship before the season was even half-way over, an even more tedious outcome than the sport has to contend with now. Perhaps the only slight advantage that the winner should receive is getting ¾ point for first, and everyone else scoring points equal to their finishing position. There is something special about winning a race, after all.

Top Club

It's not often that photos do justice to the wind strength. When it comes to representing sea state, the camera nearly always lies, but the pictures from the recent Crewsaver Top Club event at Grafham Water really did look quite windy. It was the weekend of the autumnal equinox, statistically one of the breeziest times of year, and it looked as though the weather was running to form. I caught up with Emma Harris, who along with Pete Vincent had masterminded the Top Club idea, to see how it had gone.

Apparently there were a couple of broken masts on the Saturday, but the 30 club teams had a mix of conditions, from 5 knots up to 20 or more. Parkstone Sailing Club won with a team of a 420, Fireball and Laser 4.7. Emma says her email inbox was flooded with thank-you messages and comments about next year's event. She and Pete seem to have got something going here.

Grafham ran a very slick operation, with three different race officers managing three different race courses, moving seamlessly from a triangle, to windward-leeward and then a trapezoid. With racing being measured on average lap times, all the boats were finishing within 10 minutes of each other, and races were being turned around very quickly with little time to get cold in between.

In the evening, 90 of the 150 competitors stayed around for a proper sit-down meal, and the chance to win spot prizes from sponsors like Crewsaver and Lewmar. There was even the opportunity to humiliate yourself on the Lewmar grinding machine.

Such was the success of this event, it sounds like very little will change for next year's Top Club, which has already been confirmed again for Grafham. Emma hopes to double the number of competing clubs to 60, which I think is eminently achievable. It wouldn't surprise me if five years from now this has become so popular that a club has to qualify just to be able to compete. To get 30 clubs attending in Top Club's first year is the sign of greater things to come.

There could have been even more clubs competing this year, but for a few unfortunate no-shows. A couple of clubs had one of their three boats pull out at the eleventh hour, with the other team boats then deciding not to make the trip. Some clubs even paid their entry fee only to discover that none of their three representative boats showed up! Some explaining to do at the next club AGM for those sailors, I suspect. As for the poor old team from the Isle of Man, that cursed autumnal equinox kicked up a fearsome storm and forced the cancellation of their ferry to the mainland.

The other problem with the scheduling of this event was that it clashed with the ever-popular Southport 24-hour Race, so while no date is confirmed for next year's Top Club, the likeliest outcome is that it will be shoved back to the following weekend next year. Hopefully the Isle of Man ferry will be operating then. If you want to enter your club for Top Club 2005, you can keep abreast of developments at the website: www.topclub.org.uk