Happy Christmas and a Sunny and Breezy 2008 to you all

All you dinghy monkeys with securely attached gonads should consider the HSC Winter Series. It's for dinghies really but the SB3s are welcome they say. If you're not toughing it out at Glencoe or merely trying to keep warm by the fire this could be just the thing.

Five days racing with 2 windward-leeward (ish) races back to back. 1st Start 12.30. Entry fee £20 for the series. What a bargain! Where else could you get 2 races, a pie and a cup of soup all for 4quid! And space in the dinghy park for the duration.

The dates are: Sundays 27th Jan, 10th Feb, 24th Feb, 9th March & 24th March.

Clyde Cruising Club

I just had the CCC 'Tidelines' newsletter thing in with the Christmas cards the other day. You may not be a CCC member but the influence of the CCC is so considerable that whether member or not, the Club's fortunes are likely to impinge upon you in one way or another. The publication includes a very upbeat summary of Commodore Jim's (McIlwraith) time. He has been a seriously busy bunny and has done much to improve the financial status of the Club including a lot of work on reversing the loss-making of the Scottish Series and getting new 'subliminal' sponsorship in for other events some of which are all-new and which have garnered significant interest.

One particularly interesting piece of news was to read that instead of the CCC running the out-in-the-Firth yacht component of the Polaris Regatta, there will be new event, the GSS/CCC North Clyde Regatta run out of Rhu Marina on the same weekend with racing on the waters between the East and West Patch. The GSS bit denotes sponsorship from Gareloch Support Services and there will be social stuff attached at Rhu. This should be a very worthwhile development which should not affect the success of the Polaris Regatta which has built a lot of strength and cred in the dinghy and keelboat fleets sailing in the Holy Loch. We still miss the mad times we used to have with the September Bute event at Rothesay but this should be a good sailing event at a time when we need one. The date is the weekend Sep 13/14th.

Also interesting is the CCC summer cruise / race 2008 to the Festival Of The Sea at Brest. The said Festival is allegedly a a massive event and CCC Cruising Sec, Charlie Craig states that to get there is roughly 3.5 days sailing and you could do it there and back inside a 2 week holiday. Maybe worth thinking about and Charlie Craig will be giving a talk on his experiences of his 2004 cruise to Brest for the previous Festival, at Bardowie on 7th Jan. The talk at Bardowie that is, not the festival.

We're Back

So here's Clydesailing back, albeit in a stripped down state at present. I'll probably reopen the site fully next sailing season but I'm going to take a bit of a break over the winter months and maybe do a wee revamp. There will be the odd item appearing but I'm not going to attempt off-season coverage of sailing elsewhere in the world as you can read about that better on other sites. However we do have a nice piece coming up about going to Key West Race Week , something many of us would like to do if it didn't get in the way of important stuff like skiing.

The most useful thing on the site at the moment is the provisional list of events for 2008.

We have reclaimed the Discussion Forum with many thanks to Marineblast for providing the links while we were away. Marineblast is always worth a look for the videos and his distinctive take on matters sailing.

On the Forum you'll see that this month we have a new advertiser. This ad has been provided by Kevin Aitken who runs Aitken Sports Agencies which supplies the chandlers with the excellent Henri Lloyd sailing wear. Kevin is perhaps best known for his successes in Sigma 33 with 'The White Tub' but before that the Sonata 'Wicked Willy' was a force to be reckoned with. Now on board, and I must get the name right, 'Duckwall Pooley', he has had an eventful ARC and is far from being in racing retirement. I'm sure anything with the H-L tag on it would be welcomed by any sailor at Christmas. End of plug.

On One Design

One of the biggest events on the Clyde in 2008 is going to be the Laser SB3 Nationals at Largs. Whether you like the idea or not there can be no doubt that the SB3 sportboat has taken off in a big way both on the South Coast and in Ireland. Sure, in those places there are lots of people who can afford to take up the latest fad but it cannot be denied that over 100 boats at Cowes Week is a seriously large fleet. What follows is a personal opinion and you are welcome to disagree on the discussion board.

In the course of club level IRC cruiser racing I hear a lot of general grumping about one design racing, the lack of it and what might be the best way to get into it. Certainly with the passing of the Sigma 33 and leaving aside the venerable but slow Sonata, cruiser one design is not imaginable locally in the forseeable future. On the Clyde we do still have some one-design and yes they still have their individual merits and they show every sign of carrying on as they have done for many years. I'm thinking Pipers and Loch Longs but for at least some of us they are just a bit too classic. There is also a prosperous Flying 15 scene on the Holy Loch and that is by a long way the cheapest and most accessible way to get into one design keelboats. I can see the attraction of that as the Flying 15 remains a fun boat to sail.

However looking outwards to more modern designs what do we have?

The Hunter 707 was a conservative symmetric spinnaker design that never really seemed to set the heather on fire. They are cheap now and there appears to be some good racing going on the Forth. But their day has passed. The 1720 looked good for a while a few years back and is certainly a blast when you get it going but it also has its disadvantages. It uses 6 of a crew and one of those needs to be a near-gorilla to manage the kite. Now, across the UK, the class is dying slowly. The Sonar paralympic keelboat has been picked up by the Royal Northern as their club boat and with heavy promotion by the club has been reasonably successful there. It's a 3man modern, quite tweakable and reasonably quick design but possibly one of its worst features is its desperately uninspiring looks. At around 12k for a used one it's around the same price point or a little more than a used 1720. It could have potential to become a more widespread Clyde class but RNCYC had their own particular reason for buying into them and thus its broader appeal is more questionable. There are lots more potential designs (J80, Beneteau 25 etc ) but none shows any likelihood of taking off locally.

So what about the Laser SB3? It's Tony Castro's attempt to shrink his1720 to a 3man size. Low tech, tin mast, manageable sheet loads, easy to launch, trailable behind a normal car - all sounds good to me. Too expensive? Well it's not cheap new at just short of £19k. However there are now used examples appearing from around the £12k mark. Split 3 ways that could be affordable to many. Is it too fast, too exciting or too wet for us on the Clyde? Surely not. There are rumours of build quality issues and it certainly won't last as long as a Piper. But the marketing power of the Laser brand is unmatched and it's hard to see how this design is going to be overtaken any time soon by something more modern or radical or just different. I think the mass market appeal of the SB3 is that, just like the original Laser, it isn't too radical or, like the RS K6, too fragile. It looks to me like this is the small sportboat finally evolved into something we could go out and race. Does anybody else think so?

SB3 photo - scottishsailing.com

Here's a photo of Kudos Hope she gets better soon. (photo credit either Andy McLaren or Cherry McIvor)