2010 promises to be another classic year for the 700
fleet. With the Europeans being held at the ever popular
lake Garda in late July, and the Nationals being held at
Hunstanton in the Autumn we’re hoping to see more people
out on the circuit than ever before.
Coaching remains very high on our agenda and once again
Mark Pollington is setting up an excellent programme. If
you’ve never been to one and particularly if you are new
to the class, attendance is highly recommended. We
always hear from a number of people who can’t make the
scheduled sessions. If you find yourself in this
situation but would be interested in hosting an event at
your local club, please get in touch with Mark as we are
more than happy to set up a session wherever there is a
need.
Apart from
having a new open circuit sponsor this year, Gul having
now agreed to focus their support on the open circuit,
we’ve also made a few changes to make the circuit as
‘parent friendly’ as possible. We have reduced the
number of events in the Gul Grand Prix Circuit from 6 to
5 and most importantly we are counting each day of the 5
events as a scoring event in its own right. So instead
of counting 4 of the 6 two day events for the circuit
results as we did in 2009 , we will be counting 6 of the
10 one day events.
What this will mean in practical terms is that if you
are unable to make both days, and many people tell us
they struggle to commit a full weekend, you can now turn
up, pay a one day entry fee, enjoy a great days racing
and know that your performance on the day is
contributing to you overall circuit score.
The news
from LDC seems positive with sales of new and
second-hand boats continuing at a pace. A small
milestone for the class was reached over the Winter with
GBR1000 quietly hitting the waters North of London.
Having lost out at the Nationals, Jon Heissig picks up
the 2009 Circuit prize to go with his Eurocup win. There
were 34 entries for the 6 events, with the top 4 being:
1st Jon Heissig
2nd Rob Jones
3rd Ian Nolan
4th Steve Marshall
First Silver was Brendan Jenner who sailed 3 events
coming last in each. However, this was obviously a ploy
to come out as best improver as he finished the season
with a 12th at the Nationals and 3rd at the Inlands,
showing that he has what it takes in both light and
strong winds. He moves up to the Gold Fleet for 2010.
Full results are available on the association website
2010 Gold Fleet
So who are the runners at the fron of the fleet in the
coming season. The criteria for Gold fleet membership
are as follows:
In Last
2 Years
Top
third in Nationals or Europeans
Top 3 in
more than one event in a season
Top 5 in
the circuit
Top 3 in
Inlands
First in
Silver Fleet in Nationals or Circuit
And this is
a lifetime membership, so once gold always gold.
So here they are, the 2010 Gold Fleet:
Top third in Nationals:
Tim
Johnson,Jon Heissig, Mike Dencher. Nick Miller,
Richard Allen, Ed Reeves, Chris Aston, Tony Dencher,
Michael Barnes, Mark Nicholson, Mark Pollington,
Brendan Jenner, Phil Dickinson
Top Third
Carnac:
Cedric
Fraboulet, Eddie Gatehouse
Scored Top 3 in more than one event
Rob
Jones, James Ross, Colin Dacey
Top 5 in
Racing Circuit
Ian
Nolan, Steve Marshall
Plus from
2008
Paul
Bayliss, Tim Poltglase, Nick Peters, Dave Gorringe,
Aiden Mitchell, Andy Brown, Andy Holland, Ian Swann,
Simon Letten, Stuart Riches, Chris Wright, Pete
Purkiss, Ben Cooper, Matt Humphreys
And some
others (and there are many more who could be added) from
way back:
Jerry
Wales, Alex Southon, Guy Mager
RS700 ‘Ladder’
As a distraction I have compiled an RS700 Ladder out of
all 10 event results using a high point scoring system
giving the first boat the number of entries with one
less for 2nd, 2 less for 3rd etc. This gives a stronger
weighting to the larger events. There were 61
competitors in total across all 10 events. Here are the
top 15 with their points scored.
1 Jon Heissig 126
2 Tony Dencher 70
3 Richard Allen 68
4 Rob Jones 65
5 Mike Dencher 60
6 Phil Dickinson 59
7 James Ross 56
8 Ian Nolan 52
9 Mark Pollington 51
10 Chris Aston 46
11 Steve Marshall 46
12 Peter Shaw 46
13 Brendon Janner 45
14 Colin Dacey 36
15 Tim Johnson 34
For anyone who hasn’t been before, Chew Valley Lake is
large reservoir located south of Bristol and offers an
excellent inland water for 700 sailing - with space to
enjoy the downwind legs before thinking of taking the
kite back down! The launching area is typically
sheltered and slipways wide and gently sloping.
Depending on wind direction, it can be gusty and dealing
with these is probably the biggest challenge when
sailing on the lake – but at least there are no pesky
waves…
The lake is free from obstruction except for the
underwater spit to the south of Denny Island – but
that’s only a problem if the water is low (should be Ok
at the moment then!). Ask a local for the exact location
if the water is low.
Club website
www.chewvalleysailing.org.uk gives a good list of
accommodation options. Camping/campervans overnight are
frowned upon on-site.
The briefing time is at 12.15hrs on the Saturday. First
scheduled start times are 13.00hrs on Saturday and
11.00hrs on Sunday, there will be 3 races each day. The
sailing time to the racing areas is about 5 minutes.
The club has professional caterers who will be serving
freshly cooked healthy food throughout the event.
The club bar will be open Saturday evening serving very
reasonably priced beer or alternatively Bath/Bristol are
nearby.
The 2010 RS700 National Championships will be held at
Hunstanton Sailing Club from the 2nd to the 5th
September.
Hunstanton
Sailing Club is looking forward to hosting the RS700
Nationals for the first time. HSC has a wealth of
experience hosting various class National Championships
including, Enterprise, Cherub, Miracle, RS 300 as well
as various Circuit events. Anyone who has sailed at HSC
will agree it has some of the best sailing conditions in
the UK with the sailing area directly in front of the
launch area. The club house looks directly over the race
area making a great spectators location and of course
it’s the only place on the East Coast where the sunsets
over the sea, a great way to relax over a beer after a
hard day. The club is well known for its friendly,
relaxed and fun approach to ensuring a successful event,
with some guaranteed fun evening entertainment!
This website
will be updated with more information over the coming
weeks but for any immediate enquiries please call Andy
Holland 07767606761 or Stuart Riches 07833225298 or
[email protected]
This event will also count towards the 2010 RS700
Eurocup.
Having excellent boat speed always make winning races
easier, but in a competitive fleet like the RS700 where
most of us are fast. Getting the wind shifts right will
get you to the front of the fleet or save you from a
poor start much quicker than relying on boat speed
alone.
These basic rules of thumb will not always work but will
help to improve your overall chances of getting the best
of the wind you are given.
Rule 1: Sail towards the next wind shift
Accelerator: Sail fast towards the next wind shift
Why? When the wind shifts, the boats that’s closer to
the new wind direction will end up closer to the new
wind and will therefore gain. So head for the next wind
shift and don’t waste time getting there. This works in
any wind pattern, oscillating or persistent.
Rule 2: Sail the longer tack first (upwind or downwind)
Accelerator: Avoid lay lines
If there is any doubt about what the wind will do next,
you improve your chances of success if you sail the
longest tack/gybe to the next mark. Get to the middle of
the course where you have more strategic options.
Rule 3: In light air, sail for pressure - In heavy air,
sail for shifts
Conundrum: What do you do in medium air?
In light air finding a little more wind will help you
sail faster, get trapezing sooner and maximise your
apparent wind. When lake sailing look for pressure
streaks or lumps of gust then keep gybing to stay in the
pressure. In heavy air, a little more wind wont make as
much of a difference as a change in direction so focus
on the shifts.
Rule 4: Play the wind as Oscillating or Persistent
Conundrum: The ideal response to an oscillating shift is
often the opposite from the way to handle a persistent
shift.
Oscillating Shifts (e.g. A North Westerly wind on an
inland lake - the wind oscillates about a steady
bearing)
Tack on the headers / gybe on the lifts
Sail the longer tack / gybe first
Sail towards boats that look bad
Don’t let other boats cross you
Stay in the middle of the course
Persistent Shifts (e.g. A Sea breeze following the sun
through the afternoon)
Sail into the headers
Sail the shorter tack first
Sail towards other boats that look good
Be willing to cross behind other boats
Sail towards one side of the course
Be careful not to over stand the mark
The 700 continues to grow abroad, with the French fleet
now numbering over 20 boats after an epic trip in the
pre Christmas snow. LDC have also sent a dozen boats to
the Czeckoslovakia where there is talk of holding a
national championship and they've even shipped another
boat out to the USA.
We have three RS organised events in the calendar, but
can arrange more if your club has an interest. If you
have a embrionic fleet & would like some help then drop
me an e-mail at
[email protected] & we can
set something up. Here are the current events:
Datchet WSC - 27 February
Queen Mary SC - 27 March
Hunstanton SC Pre-Nationals - 1 September
Last year I
enjoyed filming some training footage using
a Predator camera. See opposite.
I hope you are finding this useful. It's certainly
helped me see where I can improve! I'll be taking the
camera out this year to focus on other elements of RS700
technique. If you want to know more about the camera
click here
http://www.predatorworld.co.uk/#page=Home
Looking forwards to a busy sailing year.
Mark Pollington
RS700 963
If video link missing opposite
click here for YouTube clip
So what is the question every design engineer expects to
hear? I want it cheaper, lighter, simpler, better and
more reliable than the existing solution. Well, I’ve
sailed the 700 for a couple of years now and the control
line takeaway system always seemed overly complex to me
with a lot of blocks and pieces of elastic floating
around (with apologies to LDC), so with my latest boat I
thought I’d have a go at improving things. Fortunately
the control line takeaways are one area which the rules
allow you a pretty free hand to change as long as the
takeaways are “close to and inside the fore and aft wing
bars”. Having looked at the standard system long and
hard I came up the following solution which seems to be
a step forward.
Apart from the complication, the key points which used
to annoy me were an outhaul which rarely got adjusted
and a Cunningham system which used to migrate all of the
slack to the port side during the course of a race to
the point that you’d have to change tacks to adjust the
control.
First step in the process was to fit a continuous
Cunningham along the same lines as the standard
continuous kicker. However to duplicate the existing
kicker system would have added even more string to what
was already a fairly cumbersome system so after a bit of
measuring I realised that all of the slack which you
generate from adjusting either the kicker or Cunningham
from fully on to fully off could be accommodated
alongside one wing bar. An idea was born!
The basic concept!
For each of the two major control lines, on one side
leave the existing takeaway system in place, but on the
other side, instead of leading the control line back to
an elastic takeaway, lead it forward, through a new
double block and across the boat. There is now only one
takeaway on each side of the boat and both Cunningham
and kicker are continuous. Happy days!
In this photo you can see the basic idea. The black
kicker being led forward to cross the boat to the
takeaway on the starboard side, whereas the grey
Cunningham is led back to the port takeaway elastic.
The details, step by step:
Key things to get right are to reduce friction by using
blocks instead of rings and to have the control lines
and takeaway elastics set to the right lengths.
1. Replace the rings at the front of the wing bar with a
double ball bearing block as both kicker and Cunningham
are going to be continuous.
2. Replace the single block by the mast step with a
medium sized metal ring. This will accommodate both
ropes without adding more complication to an already
busy area of the boat and without adding much friction
because of the shallow turning angle.
3. Replace the rings through on the wing bars with small
ball bearing blocks to reduce friction. I also took the
opportunity to mount these higher on the wing bar using
a dyneema loop tied off through the original rivet
holes. This makes the controls easier to grab.
4. Replace the blocks, deck-eye and associated rope at
the back of the wing bars with a single small ball
bearing cheek block, riveted or bolted directly to the
wing bar.
5. To set the Control Line lengths you will need the
mast and sail rigged and the wings on the correct hole.
With the controls fully on the, set the control line
length so that the floating block is 10-15cm short of
the turning block at the back of the wing bar. Set like
this, whent eh controls are fully eased, there should
still be enough rope free to allow you to grab and pull
the controls on.
6. Once again, with the control line fully on, set the
elastic so that it will just tension the block and stop
it flying about. I prefer to use 3-4 mm elastic as this
isn’t so strong that it pulls the controls on when you
are trying to hoist the sail.
The Outhaul
I kept this really simple as I rarely adjust it.
Completely remove all of the outhaul takeaway system,
shorten the control line so that it will just reach out
to the wing and pass through the original deck eye on
the wing bar. Then splice some 2mm elastic to the end
which is lead back and tied off to the turning block at
the back of the wing bar.
The system worked very well as soon as I fitted it to
the boat and I think everyone who has seen the boat
close up agrees that it is a very simple, effective and
elegant solution.
The downside, well there is always a compromise and the
important bit here is to get the control lines just the
right length as there is little tolerance. You should
also consider that they will need to be redone if you
change wing settings more than a hole or two, and as
usual you’ll need to adjust the elastic once everything
has bedded in.
All in all I think this comes very close to fulfilling
the engineers challenge. (retires smugly to the bar)
