Warming Pan kick off

Andy Nicholson previews Hamble's traditional dinghy season opener

This weekend sees one of the big, start-of-the-season-openers, for dinghy sailors in the UK with the Hamble Warming Pan.

The Daily Sail got the low down about the event from its organisers Ross Elliston and Peter Slimming, Vice Commodore and Rear Commodore Sailing respectively of hosts Hamble River Sailing Club.

The club itself is a traditional local club - they have not attempted to go down the route of the new dinghy sailing ‘Super Clubs’ - and very much focuses on it's local family-based membership. During the 1980s and 90s HRSC was firmly rooted in the keelboat arena and the intervening years has seen it make a steady transition back to an equal balance of dinghies and keelboats. This has been fuelled by the desire to get kids into the sport.

The club's most notable recent success, apart from it’s annual Winter Series for yachts, has been the 2002 Firefly Nationals with 71 entries. The Firefly has had a long relationship with the club and has since proved itself as an excellent youth boat, training boat and team racing boat. The club actually owns seven sponsored Fireflys which are available for members to sail or on open days.

The traditional season opener on the Hamble goes back to 1962 when the club decided to hold some racing for the International 14s, Merlins and National 12s. The Warming Pan was decided as an appropriate trophy as sailors were putting the winter behind them. The ‘pan’ was used in days of old as a way of heating the bed before you jumped in. The invention of the rubber hot water bottle has happily replaced the technique of putting hot coals under your sheets, but this has caused a problem for the organisers. Ross Elliston explains: “We can no longer find tacky little warming pans to give out to winning crews for keeps, so unfortunately is back to the usual glassware!”

Over the past years the weekend turned into a multi-class event as numbers dwindled but last year, on the 40th anniversary, HRSC decided it was time to return to the roots of the Warming Pan with racing for a six specific classes.

Fireflys, Merlins and RS200s will be racing on the ‘inside course’. This means starts off the club house in the river and the course usually takes the boats right up to Hamble Point Buoy and then back into the river and up to the Royal Southern. This gives the crews some interesting sailing, which will include threading their way through moored and moving yachts on the river.

Outside of the river the second group of boats, the 14s, Laser 4000s and RS400s will race on more open traditional style courses.

So why have they decided on these classes? Peter Slimming says that they invited the National 12s back last year, but they were only interested in sailing on the outside course, which was already full. "The Merlins were really happy to race in the river and I think they like the challenge of racing in the confined waters for a change." He adds: “the Laser 4000 always had a great turn out, and then we thought the two big RS doublehanded classes would round it all off.”

Upwards of 100 boats are expected, congestion in the dinghy park is eased by using much of the grassy waterfront area near the club, by permission of the local council. The Club also open up Donkey Derby Field, just round the corner for all car parking.

Two races are going to be held each day with a midday start on Saturday followed by an 11am start on Sunday. The club’s kitchen will be open for breakfast and lunch (the ‘insiders’ come ashore between races) and the bar will be open on Saturday night. The prizegiving will be held soon after racing concludes on the Sunday, where the all-important Warming Pans will be handed out to each class winner.

You can enter the racing on the day, £12 for the day or £20 for the weekend. More details can be found on www.hambleriversc.org.uk .

The Daily Sail will be publishing the first of our meteorologist Libby Greenhalgh’s 2003 sailing forecasts on Friday. So it’s a case of getting out of that bed, winter’s over, throwing away that hot water bottle and getting out on the water to try and win yourself a famous Warming Pan!