Hard? Difficult? What is difficult? What Level do you sail at, what then is Difficult?

I was having some discussions on Sailing Anarchy about various boats, sails and styles of sailing.

Firstly the Melges 24 came up, and it is amazing how j80 sailors and other twits slag the boat for being hard-to-sail!

Then there came up the 59er again. 150kg all up H&W team wanting to buy one and derigg to an XX ladies style rig. Why? I mean they are in the target weight range?

This got me thinking about not what is difficult but how people perceive difficult in sailing, and how much that influences the rate of adoption of new boats, equipment and techniques.

Asymmetric sails with bowsprits in dinghies and in yachts have revolutionised the sport: to begin with the big A sails on skiffs, I14s and sportboats were viewed with Awe. Wow, you have to be a king sailor to take these on!!

Soon asymmetric's were stuck on a merlin rocket and then various little tubs also had them, all be these not any good at VMG and sailing apparent wind if it is not blowin a hooly.

Scarey Old Dinosaurs

Pitch poling a skiff does not really frighten me , nor does broaching a melges in a blow: I am way more scared of doing a death roll in a 1970s ton derived 24 to 34 footer!

In the UK and USA there has been a bit of a collapse in OD dinghy sailing and that is because the fleets are dying with their owners: they are old, stagnant boats with old sailing styles and it all gets a bit pimms and blazers. The Youth Squad system is very pyramidal, with a huge drop out rate and a steep sided effect from a small base of very involved families in fact to get into 29er and go up to 49er for example. This has the aim of Olympic Medals. On the other end, the RYA and clubs with Dinghies in the USA shove "developer" level dinghy sailors out in low performance boats.

Stagnation of Trad, Slow, Heavy Classes

In the UK, Norway and the USA, adults are still sailing dinosaurs which should have died years ago. There are some good classics in there like the Solo, Fireball, 505 and the Mirror which have their place, but please can we not stop racing wayfarers? Larks? Gp14s? Thistles ? Dare I say Snipes without getting my Ass kicked ?  I even think the wonderful Tasar has had its day, although it could be a very good bridge for heavy boat sailors to shift over to light, modern boats.

The three big success stories in the UK have been the RS400 - a very very heavy boat , the SB3 a pretty old fashioned build and quite heavy, and the RS Feva a youth trainer which needs a storm to sail apparent wind on its spinnaker. A bit dependable, and you can build them at a profit without rethinking your production lines much.

As for yachties, I hate to see all the " get off the line and sail in your own wind and your own cheque book wafting you along" IRC racing going on. At least the larger IRC boats are pretty sexy assy's with frac rigs and non overlapping headsails, but really sailing heavy displacement boats should be the reserve for cruisers who want to race not racers who want to race. The SB3 fleet in the UK and things like the Melges 24 in Scandinavia, and the Platu in Iberia and other spots are doing good things, where as the UK is wallowing in 40 foot rich boys toy caravans.

Getting Tooled Up

Sailing has become a faster sport, and the mesmorising Americas Cup AC 72 sailing in San Francisco shows just how speed adds to excitement. I mean it looked like a Sci Fi movie! Kevin Kostner sails a 22 knot shitter!

When I helm the melges I am actually pulling on a big pile of mental, motoric and balance learning and knowledge to be able to sail the boat safely first and foremost. It is a piece of piss - I was totally taken a-back as to how easy the M24 is to helm and crew on.

The experience I pull on is from a lot of mediocre dinghy sailing and good courses in the main, plus actually even a fair amount of time one summer windsurfing. If I get loose on some 29er sailors as instructor again then I want to be looking at getting them all out on boards a couple of times as a surprise training evening.  Board experience with simple things like beach starts and duck gybes, taught me about using the centre line and balance which was put to use in particular in the "tippy" tasar to sail off the beach sans dagger board.

Tasars and the 9er boats plus some other few, are so light relative to sail area, that they are sods to sail without the dagger board, but in fact if you just understand the idea of dynamic stability from attached flow on the hull and sails and momentum, then you grasp what you have to do: you have to sail the things ALL THE TIME.

This may seem a bit wearing to to GP14 sailor, but you can de-power modern rigs on the kicker and Cunningham and drift along on a tight reach.

Future: The Post Modernist, Individualistic Sailing Society ?

I really do want to see a lot more skillful, higher performance sailing around the place and not more stagnation into IRC wannabees and neat looking new builds for dinosaur dinghies.

However we have now the foiling revolution which could take up a lot of energy in the organisations because foiler types are very committed and active people. If at the moment the smallest minority of hull borne racing sailors.

Then we have of course kite-boarding, which is all well and good and in fact may lead to more people wind surfing as they get frustrated with traveling to the right locations and the sport gets legislated off many public beaches were it uses up lots of water and air space!

Hope for Progress

Luckily sailing is a bit more free than the loaded dice of parliaments, congress and senate. It is the freedom which has lead to the AC72 and the same freedom which allows people to stick in the mud with old designs, or cluster around rules made originally for cruisers to have a nice day out with an idea of how they did over the course.

Speed is driving the media attention and the Consumer-Generated-Media on YouTube around kiting, foiling and extreme sailing. This will have a rub off on how sailors feel about their sport and boats, and what types of people with spend come into the sport.

This spurt-of-speed freakery is kind of like the 1980s again, when 18 foot skiffs and windsurfers captured the imagination and fast one designs like the Mumms flourished, while the seeds of assy' sports boats were soan. In the 1970s,  catamaran dinghies and huge spinnaker sail areas drove this media attention, which lead to the first rack of planing keel boats with broad sterns perhaps like the first class 8.

So each epoch of speed freak end of the sport, spawns new design and new interest in more speed and excitement in fleet racing. 

Like I say there are glimmers of hope in many places and some outright success stories for new, faster sailing. Finally on this point,  there are two affordable trailer sailor 3 to 4 man boats on both sides of the Atlantic which have gained critical mass- The SB20 (neigh laser sb3) and the new j70 which has eclipsed the M24 for numbers in the USA within a year of launch.  Even in Scotchlandshire, there is a surge in the popularity of the diminutive Hunter 707, a cracking little package which sits rock steady at 15 knots planing!

Damp Freddie's Crystal Ball

I think a very likely thing will be more windsurfing and more multihull sailing as speed is back in fashion. Cat sailors are usually speed freaks, so those with wad in wallet probably want to splash on Carbon foiling set ups now. That will lead to a big second hand market in the last generation of cats, which are pretty user friendly and often car toppable.

Also I see there being more adult 29er sailing as smaller adults and ladies take to trying the boat on a second hand basis having sailed them in schools or previously owned in the squad system. They are tricky to sail, but incredibly rewarding and simple to set up and launch it has to be said.

In sports boats, I think the j70 and SB 3 will lead to a generation of higher performance sailors with a wider base than their rivals the M24, Platu and Cork 1720 established. This in turn will lead to "grown ups" later on buying bigger racer-sleepers rather than IRC 6 knot shit boxes. Racer sleepers are faster and cheaper and there is now a wad of designs in the 26 to 32 foot range. I tip the A 27 may be one to watch for a UK and north EU fleet of OD.


My dream of the 59er gaining traction is just a pipe dream - high performance sailing has been a bit biased to lighter crews outside 18 foot skiffs - so if there aren't a lot of veteran skiffies out there wanting an easy to rig and sail ride then I don't think it will go anywhere. It would however be a really excellent club training boat with a single trap on board, or double trap, which an instructor can sit on board with to coach teenagers or small adults.


Myself, well I just want to take the challenges I can while I save up some cash eventually and the mortgage market opens up to loaning on your house again. I have possibilities for a syndicate next year, but may settle for not racing much, but instructing from the helm more- and that will be in some old shitter believe me :-(