My first Yngling experience

Sam Davies took time out from her Mini campaign to sail with Shirley Robertson at last week's Yngling Worlds in Newport, RI

Recently elected as the Women's Keelboat Class for the 2004 Olympics, the Ynglings last week held their World Championships in Newport, Rhode Island. There were several girls there in the same position as me - starting out in a new class, potentially at the beginning of a three-year Olympic campaign and all of us with so much to learn!
I am sailing with Shirley Robertson. I do the bow, Shirley steers. Presently we do not have a 'middle-girl', but for the Worlds Craig Mitchell made an excellent stand-in! We bought a 31-year-old Yngling with a good CV from Denmark. Freddie (she is really called Freakke Frede, which means 'Wicked Willy' after the famous cartoon character, but Shirley took the picture off the side!) was originally built in Norway and is hull number 16. She has the original 'low floor', while the newer Ynglings have a much higher floor.

Before we shipped her to the States, we had time to get Freddie's bottom and foils faired, but there was a lot of other work to do to her inside and to her rigs. Our first week in Newport was spent doing boatwork, 7am to 7pm every day! We replaced every block, improved/customised several purchase systems to how we wanted them, replaced all the lines with lighter (stripped and spliced) spectra, measured everything on the 'standard' rig, rigged up our new Proctor rig, polished the bottom... The list goes on forever.

Our plan before the Worlds was to learn about the settings on the rig. The Yngling Class rules allow the crew to change the rig (shrouds and lowers) during the races (you can only adjust the forestay between races). As you can imagine, this can make huge differences to boat speed so it is vitally important to know how the changes to the shrouds and lowers affect the performance in certain conditions.

Not all the rigs are identical either. They must conform to certain rules (including weight, balance and bend tests) but the different rigs respond very differently to shroud tensions, so each rig has its own set of 'numbers'. We had two rigs to decide between and two suits of sails to choose from.

It is a very interesting time for the new women's teams, with so many variables involved for testing and development. It is hard to know where to start.

The Yngling is a hiking boat. The crew 'drop hike' over the side like Soling crews, with our feet attached permanently to the floor by 'hobbles' and our back supported by a harness with a line attached at the front. The Yngling has a disappointingly low freeboard, thus enabling even the smallest crew to get totally drenched by the waves as they are drop hiked. It takes a while to get used to viewing the race course from what is effectively the water level - and being able to make tactical decisions from there.

Shirley hikes normally (she has hobbles still, but a lot of skippers have toe-straps) and was very disappointed to discover that she was going to spend another four years in her Europe hiking kit that she thought she had escaped for good. (Battened shorts were all the rage in Newport!) I have noticed that she has a cunning way of 'forgetting' to clip her hobbles in (and therefore not being able to hike).

On the subject of hiking, there were a lot of murmurs about weight limits during the Worlds. Presently there is no crew weight limit for the Yngling. Understandably, there are questions on whether there should be a weight limit for the Olympics in order for women's teams from all countries to compete on a fair level. The class has never had a weight limit, and on talking to some experienced crews it seems that the optimum weight to race at is between 210 and 240 kg. It doesn't take much to work out that with an average of 70-80 kg per girl, this is going to favour the more 'hefty' girls and realistically there are many countries that simply do not have any girls with the right build.

The general consensus seemed to be that there should be some sort of weight limit in Olympic sailing, but it was interesting to see a petition (led by the Americans) being started to stop any weight limit being enforced.

Our experience at the Worlds this year is best described as a huge (and successful) learning curve. One of the biggest things I learnt was that there is so much to learn. There are many variables to work with. The development and testing will take time and patience, but the Yngling is a responsive and rewarding little boat to sail.

My advice to anyone who is about to crew a Yngling: Take a big wet note book, and a snorkel and mask...