Sitting down in a skiff

Just over three years after Paralympic selection, the Skud 18 will see a major test this weekend

If traditional Olympic sailing sometimes struggles to put on a media friendly show then the world of Paralympic sailing has an even larger mountain to climb. This area of our sport has unqiue challenges, and creating a visual feast for the spectator is arguabley one of the biggest. While keelboats such as the 2.4mR and Sonar are well established this year’s Paralympic Games will see the innovative Skud 18 take to the waters off Qingdao. This weekend sees the IFDS (International Federation for Disabled Sailing) Qingdao International Regatta will take place - providing the Skud with its most public performance test since its launch.

The Skud 18, like the two other Paralympic classes, is a keelboat but also one that is heavily influenced by current skiff design and promises to sex up the sport on the Paralympic level in much the same way the 49er had for the Olympics.

Back in November 2005 the Skud 18 – SKiff Universal Design - was introduced as the new two person sailing competition at the Paralympics. The design – originally the UD 18 - was heralded by many as a modern, exciting boat for disabled sailors. It was designed by Chris Mitchell, of Access Dinghy Sailing Systems in Melbourne, Australia. Shortly into the project Mitchell employed the services of Martin Billoch, a naval architect from Argentina along with Julian Bethwaite, the designer of the Olympic 49er and International 29er, in the development of the rig design and hull lines. The boat is manufactured by Xtreme Sailing Products, a Singapore based company with manufacturing facilities in Indonesia.

The result was a Lead Assisted Skiff (LAS) which had chairs in the centre able to tilt to windward or leeward, a joystick control for steering and two rudders, all with a modern asymmetric rig.

Paralympic sailing is a long way from being as well funded as Olympic sailing and as such it has taken the class a little while to catch on in a global sense. The first European Championships in 2006 attracted only five boats, in fact there were only five boats in existence in Europe at the time.



The Skud 18 was designed to be fast and responsive. Although it is a keelboat, which is important for a Paralympic class, at its heart it is a skiff by design. When the boat was first launched we did question its skiff credentials but newcomer to the class and Skandia Team GBR representative, Niki Birrell believes it is an out and out high performance boat. “It is very like a skiff design. It basically has the 29er rig on it but a slightly bigger kite,” he explains. “It is pretty quick. We have had 14 knots out of it downwind which is reasonable, but obviously that is when it is blowing pretty hard.”

The boat’s two tilting seats on the centreline should allow sailors to sit relatively upright with a large amount of heel on. However, an early complaint we heard about the boat even back as far as 2006 was when heeled over some way it was all but impossible to see to windward – not very useful in any class. Birrell does not seem to think this is a major problem at present, though we get the feeling he and his 27 year old helm, Alexandra Rickham might be in the midst of some adaptation. Principally looking at the Skud 18 the problem lies, not in the positioning of the chairs but the chairs themselves which are in fact very restrictive. The seats need to offer the sort of security needed for severly disabled sailors, but perhaps this is an area that may be ripe for improvement.

This last job for the chairs is particularly important as the severity of someone’s disability is directly relevant to whether you are allowed to sail the class or not. “You have to have a one pointer [severely disabled] and a female on the boat. A one pointer is the lowest you can be and I am a seven, the highest you can be. So in our boat the helm is a one and a female [Alexandra], filling the criteria,” Birrel explains.

Development actually represents an interesting side of the Skud 18. As the boat was designed for the Paralympics and is unlike any other boat before it there were always going to be some teething problems.

When the boat was first selected for the Paralympics there was no class association as such and as a result the class is actually run by the Skud 18 Class Management Committee. This was set up by ISAF – International Sailing Federation - and IFDS – if you thought acronyms were popular in sailing, take a look at Paralympic sailing. This Committee is set to run the class until late this year when the first Paralympics for the boat have concluded when a true class association will take over. In spite of a number of changes to the class Birrell says the rules that are implemented tend to be pretty closed and seems unwilling to talk about any developments they might be doing to the boat with the Paralympics now so close.

Following something of a pattern within Skandia Team GBR Birrell himself has only recently switched to a Paralympic class. Previously he had been sailing a 470 with his brother Christian but chose to go Paralympic sailing as the 2008 Games approached. “Basically I was 470 sailing until August last year. After that I did a 2.4mR World Championship in September and did okay there. I then got given the boat in early November but all our spares went to Miami In early December so we really only did three weeks training before going to the trials early in January and did another three weeks there. So, by that time I had sailed the boat only about 20 or 25 times really. I have been sailing it fairly full time since then though.”

Perhaps in many other classes it might be difficult to switch into a class so late in the day but then with the Skud being so new and still in relatively small numbers time in the boat is at a premium for everybody, not just those who have only started sailing one recently.

As a relative new-comer, though, Birrell does have a fairly fresh perspective on the class and firmly believes it is a good for what it does with a couple of reservations. “I think it is clearly at the early age of the development so there can be improvements on the build quality but the idea behind the boat is great. It is a high performing boat with three sails and that is a great thing for the Paralympics. That is absolutely fantastic really,” he comments. When pressed on the build quality issues he referred to Birrel is a little vague but it seems generally the quality could be tightened up. “We have had a lot of breakages, like the main falling down and cleats breaking, small things like that. I feel that could all be tightened up a touch maybe but the idea behind it is a solid one. Those breakages could speak more about our boat work than everything else as well. ”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the class, particularly in light of recent events, is the attitude ISAF took to adopting the boat. With no reasonable high performance option, the Federation effectively commissioned an exciting high performance boat for the Paralympics that did everything they wanted. They then helped set the class up and got key people involved to help the global spread of the boat. This is the sort of decision many would like to see made to bring exciting classes into the Olympics. Perhaps as an indicator of how well this approach works, the performance of the Skud 18 this summer could well be integral for the future of both Paralympic and broader Olympic selection.

IFDS Qingdao International Regatta site here .