From the RYA Dinghy Show

thedailysail reports from Alexandra Palace

The exhibition halls of the RYA Dinghy Sailing Show at London's Alexandra Palace were crammed full this weekend with visitors pouring over boats, attending events on the stage from 'how to fix your gel coat' to the Helly Hansen fashion show, meeting team GBR's Olympic stars or winch grinding on the Lewmar stand.

The diversity of things to do at the show, other than simply gawp at boats and equipment, we felt was excellent and our only criticism of the show was that at peak periods the narrow aisles were becoming gridlocked. One wonders if the time hasn't come to find a new and marginally larger venue for the show?

There was also what was widely regarded as a sorry loss from the exhibitor's party on the Saturday night when we hear that the models who Wet and Wild Graphics had employed to liven up the proceedings were not allowed to attend. The wrong shoes? Or was it due to their being entirely nude save for a layer of body paint depicting Wet and Wild's corporate colours? Last year Wet and Wild adorned the dinghy show with 2000 pairs of branded knickers and this year the graphics company were trying to up the ante.

A boat drawing the longest 'oohs' and 'aahs' from visitors was Ossie Stewart's newly restored 1893 Thames A-Rater Ulva with its skimming dish profile, mirror finish varnish work and a rig that stopped short of the ceiling by a matter of inches. What we failed to mention in our article last week was that Stewart has four more Thames A-Raters that are all available for restoration to the same high standards and has a clever deal whereby those wishing to get involved can join a syndicate and pay one flat fee for the restoration work plus a nominal annual maintenance fee (contact Ossie Stewart here to find out more). Once Ulva is fully finished off she will be making her sailing debut on the Thames in Surbiton in about two weeks' time.

Top Club has now signed 64 clubs for it’s September competition. In this event clubs will field teams of three dinghies each racing in one of three PY handicap groups (slow, medium and fast) racing on different courses at Grafham. The event is open to boats with PY numbers of 800-1450 but excludes catamarans and keelboats. The club with the winning trio of boats will be named Top Club 2004. TheDailySail is on board with this excellent event as a prize sponsor.

There was some interesting chat on the Musto Skiff stand, with the guys from Devoti planning an ‘interesting event’ for the near future. Rick Perkins was tight lipped about exactly what this event will be, but we’ll keep you posted.

Laser’s ‘interesting event’ will be the big World Championship being held in Turkey in May. Laser UK are supplying the organisers with the 140 boats needed for the Standard and Masters competitions. These will be up for sale after the event through the European distributors.

There are two signficant moves in the pipeline. Selden Masts (which includes the Proctor range) are making good progress with the construction of their new factory in Fareham, they are hoping to move in during November this year. Specialised tooling for the new factory includes a longer filament winding bed for their carbon spars and a new 25m autoclave. This will enable them to produce one piece carbon yacht spars upto 25m in length.

Harken UK, are upping sticks to a new purpose built facility in Ampress Park, Lymington. The new premises will be four times bigger than their current one and according to Harken’s Andy Ash Vie it will “provide room to expand”. This will be the third distribution warehouse in the Harken empire, with the States looking after hardware, Italy the winches and the UK the ever growing line of ‘software’. Harken were showing the latest incarnation of their popular sailing gloves featuring a new lighter coloured back (which should make them cooler on sunny days) and a sticker palm for grip.

As usual the Harken stand featured a boat to get the pulse racing, this time in the form of Mike Cooke's hot rod National 12 which was fully in need of large air intakes and chrome exhaust pipes. Mike has set up a company Aardvark Technologies based in Nottingham to build things in carbon fibre be they 12s, Moths, Cherubs, etc or parts of said boats.

Mike's 12 is unique in having a canting rig - similar to the Merlin Rocket featured on the Harken stand at Earls Court last year. The canting mechanism incorporates a crossbar arrangement (see below) to maintain shroud tension regardless of the direction the rig is pointing. Mike will be giving us the full technical low-down about his new vessel in the near future (see page two for more images).



The dinghy show also saw the unveiling of RMW Marine's latest International 14, the Morrison 12, which World Champions Rob Greenhalgh and Dan Johnson will be sailing this year.

Overall the new beastie is substantially narrower than the Morrison 11 - Richard Woof says three foot aft from the bow the new boat is four inches narrower. The beam of a 14 is limited by a rise of floor measurement and the new boat has a significant bump in the bottom of the topsides just aft of the mast. "It is as narrow as we can make it to support the crew weight needed to support this rig," Richard Woof told us.

The rudder arrangement remains the same as the RMW team used in Japan with the entire stock and T-foil moving, but the degree of articulation has been upped to 10 degrees.

"We couldn’t get enough off in Japan," Woof enthused. "There are some stages where you need to park the transom down. Rob sailed the windy race in Japan with lift on which shows how good he is." Slightly more controversial are the movable weight correctors installed on the boat which between races can be moved closer to the mast if conditions go light. The Morrison 12 will be making its competition debut with the World Champs on board at the Hamble Warming Pan on 20-21 March.

This year the class' Prince of Wales Cup week will be held in North Berwick at the East Lothian Yacht Club, reopened last spring following a major Lottery-backed refurbishment. The event will give the opportunity for the UK fleets to come together, although it will be a substantial hike for the south coast boats to get up there.

The International 14 class is currently swelling in numbers. Part of the reason is due to the dropping price of new boats. While 14s once upon a time would set you back £16-17,000 now a new Morrison 12 is closer to £10,000, similar to a 49er. Obviously modern 14s are about half the size they were a decade ago but Richard Woof says the price drop is also down to improved production methods. Whatever the reasons, the RMW order book for 14 is looking exceedingly healthy.

Class chairman Victor Brellisford guesses that if the Nationals were being held this year on the south coast they might be seeing 10 more boats than the 68 that competed at Halying Island in 2003. Among those joining the class are some of the "old heroes" such as Mike Lennon and Martin Jones. "Our average age is shooting up ironically as the price of the boats is coming down," Brellisfold told us.

Brellisford says that those in the class have now got the hang of their T-foil rudders. "It starts out and you are so unsensitive to it but you get more and more tuned into it. Eventually it is like ‘that’s a huge difference...' but when you start out on it, it is more ‘is it doing anything?’, and ‘ow, my legs are hurting’. I remember the first time I went out with it I was in agony - I had terrible pains in my legs, because I wasn’t used to it. Now my body sets myself up for the forces that are going to be transferred through it and I don’t even notice it."

Brellisford thinks it is unlikely that although most competitive boats are now using a single T-foil they will make the step to two like the Moths have. "That would be moving it on a bit too far for us. It is a great idea but if you start going round at 30 knots it is going to knock all harbour racing on it’s head. You are not going to be able to sail from Itchenor. The harbour master doesn’t want anyone to bump into anything. Once you start going on to foils you need a big open stretch of water. I think it would change the character a lot. It would probably suit the guys in Melbourne more because of Port Philip Bay. Personally I think if it is too extreme it is not going to work for us and it will kill the numbers."

Future developments in the short term Brellisford feels are likely to be above decks in the spars and sails. Currently many different configurations are being tried, the square topped RMW mainsail on the Morrison 12 versus the more rounded Pinnell & Bax version on the Beiker 4 featured on the Ovington stand opposite the 14 class association stand at the show, being just one example. Double luffed sails are also likely to be just around the corner.

The 14s have recently signed up Crewsaver as a sponsor for the class association.

Over the next few days we will be looking at developments in other dinghy classes