Taking stock

RS celebrate their 10th anniversary next month, TheDailySail takes a look at the classes and what is planned for the year

The success of the RS asymmetric, one design, off the shelf – lets go racing – packages over the past decade has been relentless.

Chandlers Ford based LDC Racing Sailboats, who market the RS range, have successfully developed their niche of sit-out and trapezing asymmetric racing dinghies, while other manufacturers such as Laser and Topper have retreated from this market.

For Laser, the 5000 is by the wayside which just leaves just the 3000, 4000 and Vortex as the active classes in competition with RS. Topper have moved focus to the more family orientated market, the big racing classes remain as the Topper and Byte, with the Buzz, Spice, ISO and Boss fighting a losing battle.

To get to this position LDC have hit the nail on the head when it comes to what the modern dinghy racing majority are really after – straightforward one design racing, in modern easy to maintain designs - combined now with big fleets and even bigger parties.

This year marks a significant anniversary for the RS brand of 10 years on the water. LDC Racing Sailboats first exhibited the RS 400 and 600 at the London Boat Show in 1994.

They have come a long way and are in May going to celebrate in style. “We are having a party regatta at Hayling Island on the first May bank holiday,” describes RS Class Secretary, Heather Chipperfield. “So some serious racing and some less serious racing - and a couple of monster parties. What we are definitely doing is one day of serious racing and one day of serious pursuit racing. Then we are all going to race out into Hayling Bay and we’ll have one big start line, hopefully with 200 boats on it and every class is invited and they will all mash in together.” Entries have already topped the 100 mark at this early stage. For this ideal photo opportunity, they have gone as far as booking a helicopter to capture the occasion.

“That night we are going to have a black tie ball,” Chipperfield continues, “which is going to be a big old do.” Paul Bayliss, current RS 700 National champion is looking forward to it; “It’s going to be a regatta and a half, loads of boats and loads of parties”. Chipperfield finishes; “You can quote Paul Bayliss on that as he’s a man who knows his boats…and his parties”

The RS Class Association is managed by the sailors and relies heavily on volunteers to cover all the tasks involved. One of the key aims of the association this year is to increase the number of training and coaching events for RS sailors.

“We’ve worked out that we have about 50% of people who buy boats join the association. There may be a fraction of people who do join who think it’s the right thing to do and it maintains the value of their boat,” says Chipperfield. “But the majority of people only join it if they want to enter a circuit event. So there are lot of people out there who only do club racing – and no circuit events – so the question is do they think they are not good enough?

“The idea is to reach out to them, give them some coaching, help build their confidence to enter an event. Then they will probably see they are not at the back of the fleet anyway, but then they will be in the dinghy park with people, chatting, looking at the way the boats are tuned, and see how the top boats do it.”

It is hoped that these training events will encourage more RS owners to join the Association. This in turn will put more into the coffers, and so more can be done.
“We can train up more coaches, buy more video cameras, subsidise events if necessary, we can improve our communications - but it all costs money” Chipperfield concludes.

There are three main racing circuits for the RS sailor, all of which are supported by sponsors. Gul sponsor the championship events – the nationals, inlands and club championships. Fat Face are the sponsors of the Eurocup, a collection of three regattas abroad, and the UK racing circuit, with fixtures for all classes across the country.

“All the nationals are always good racing and lots of fun,” says Chipperfield. “The biggest one in terms of numbers will be the 200 and 400 nationals up at North Berwick.” These two hiking classes have had enormous success and provide a very high standard of racing in big fleets; last years turn out was a combined 163 boats. The RS 400 is likely to be more open this year with three times consecutive winner Roger Gilbert heading for the 49er and Nick Craig tackling the OK Worlds in Poole.



The 600s and 800s have their nationals this year at Mayflower Sailing Club in Plymouth which Chipperfield says is popular venue with the RS crowd and a good place to sail. The schedule over the August bank holiday means that the sailors will only have to take one extra day off work to make the event.

On the European front, the main event will be on Lake Garda in July, following on from last years’ Italian success on Lake Como. At the end of May is another event, the Fat Face Eurocup, this time in Zeeland in the Netherlands. For this the sailors will be based in a Centre Parcs complex.

One of the most popular venues that the RS classes have been to is Greystones Sailing Club in Wicklow, Ireland. The 200s and 400s will compete for the Irish nationals there in October. “We would love to throw this open to more classes but they are limited on the capacity – we currently have a waiting list” says Chipperfield.

With all this activity abroad does the association have a European strategy? “We probably have 25 members from overseas,” says Chipperfield, “mainly in the Netherlands and Germany. 600 and 700s are quite popular, but a lot of these members are actually British people who have gone to work abroad.

“The only strategy is to keep having Eurocup events where they are not just Brits abroad. Like in the Netherlands, it will be predominantly British sailors away on holiday, but there will be Dutch and the Germans, plus anyone who can drive there quite easily. That encourages the local sailors, because they see what it’s like to sail in a big RS fleet and hopefully they will encourage their club to buy them.”

To some extent this busy and varied schedule can only be good news. The RS circuit has something for everyone. With the size of the fleets now outstripping some venues, RS can no longer hold the big all–encompassing multi-class championships of a few years ago. This is a major shift. RS racing will, by necessity, become more class focused than brand focused.

While commercial competition is limited from Laser and Topper – and Ovington’s Niner range sitting at the next level up – the door is opening for the more traditional dinghy racing classes.

Last year a number of UK dinghy associations joined forces to create ‘FastSail’, a group which collectively looks after the interests of the 505, Flying Dutchman, Fireball and 470 amongst others. Providing a supportive umbrella under which these classes can collaborate should help them. Fastsail can also now ‘celebrate’ themselves, for this year it will again be the Symmetric Grand Prix at Rutland in July.

What LDC Racing Sailboats and the RS Class Association have done is shown everybody just what the right product plus an active and highly capable class management can achieve – a rather grand 10th Birthday party.

The RS 800