Brewing a Storm

The rants have stopped but the hits keep on coming. Sorry to be a senile blogg !

Okay, so something is in the offing for me with a budding fleet of Melges on my doorstep (4 maybe 5 out this year locally) and talk of laser forcing the importer to sell SB3s.

The SB3 is ideal really for many different smaller sailing nations around europe because.

1) it is an easy fleet to build- small investment as second OD boat, company boat, hire fleet or even student syndicates ! Burdgeoning second hand market too.

2) it is trailerable and hireable: so international, top level sailing is at hand within a 5 hour trip basically to the UK for now.

3) It is fun enough for most IRC slugger sailers while not scaring them - you can sail 4 so freinds and family can come out. Further to it being an "anti melges" like the Cork 1720 its big sister, this means crews can concentrate on getting their jobs right and not hiking like rag dolls and boom dodging acrobatically.

4) with a big UK fleet and regional championships, and Minorca etc owning some, you can get a feel for very tactical competition quickly because of the learning/ effort ratio is really good, unlike a melges or many hiking boats.

5) dinghy sailors will take to it like water off a ducks back: they are the big reserve in many areas with OD either being destroyed by a plethora of stupid fast twitchy assymetrics or being like here, stuck with boring old designs.