Classic sigma days

Like many a uk yattie I served out my apprenticeship on the venerable, death rolling, thigh bruising Sigma 33.

As a kid around the clyde i remember the dragons, etchells and various ton designs around the place. Add all the classic long keel ODs and it seemed like a by gone era of golden sailing had left us.

Now i can look back on my own time in the sigs as a golden period of OD. In fact after the death of the corks and depletion of the two big classes of david thomas designx, messrs smeg & snot, there has only been pipers and ff and the royal northern's fleets and all those localised.

Golden days of deliveries to near and far: Rothesay or Cork, Largs or Bangor. And the idiosyncratic names: Boojum, razzmataz, sigmatic, phoenix, Rajah, Vendeval, Blues, Rupert and the all conquering St.joan.

By 1998 it became THE boat to sail on the clyde. Cork week 96 was dominated by Clyde boats with St. Joan defiantly not needing to sail the last day to win in soveriegn style. So clyde was where it was.

After cork 98 the boat picked up popularity in Dublin and tired old examples began changing hands for small beer. The centre of gravity would move from the two fleets in the uk to the ROI over time and this diluted the whole thing eventually.

In 99 i was bored by them and it was time to move on. In fact for the 99 nationals i spent most of the week laying marks and learnt a damn site more about racing than a whole season on a smeg.

So off to sports boats and a season and a half on the corby 35 Converting Machine on the Isora and celtic week races and i never did go back to sigma 33s.

The trouble was that as i got wiser and respected and moved back along the rail to main sheet and evt also 2nd helm, i realised what a pig they are to sail compared to say a first class 8, a 707 or a j109. Especially from the blunt end.

Sail we did and it was a truly great apprenticeship. Anyone who slagged thne fleet quality could see in one race at cork in 99, over 60 boats came in within 3 minutes of the leaders. It was a dreamy spring time of my sailing career and i even started it in style, being piped thnrough the crinan canal by Ivanhoe on the Tobermoray race in 95. But those death rolls in f 5 or above. . . .i wouldnt go back to those for all the beer in Britain. . .