So you can’t or won’t continue to bust the family coffers, foregoing much needed vacations after several years’ shelling out £10,000 a season on a cutting-edge Opti programme. But you are fortunate, your kid loves the sport but wants to get on the high-performance ladder? Luckily your club is one of many now using a more favourable handicap number for, say, 505s and Fireballs of a certain age, let’s say 15 years old plus. Take the 505, bought new – you are talking US$45,000 absolute minimum; on the other hand, this older but raceable Rondar ‘starter’ 505 (top left) is currently for sale for less than $1,000 fully loaded. The much sought-after Waterat-built 505 (above) may cost you more at $7,000-$10,000 but it will last you for ever. And with a new handicap will win for ever too. Or for lighter sailors there is the Fireball (right); a challenging dinghy to sail well which is also technically more interesting than your lucky mate’s 29er – yes, an absolutely superb little mini-skiff but a manufacturer one-design that is only accessible to relatively few of the many talented youngsters coming out of Oppi fleets. This grp former national championship-winning Fireball (top right) is on the market now for £1,500 and the pitch-perfect well-sorted wood-built example (right) is currently for sale with everything you need for a frankly unbelievable price of £500. Again, we sh*t you not. Kids, if next weekend the adults do start to push your club to try a ‘different way’, then you don’t need to give up a sport that after five years of bobbing around in a box you have not even begun to truly experience
There are a handful of examples where
tweaking handicaps to favour older boats has paid dividends. For some years the Finn class has operated a simple three-tier approach for boats of different denomina- tions. All compete against each other with different ‘ratings’ and similarly are sepa- rately handicapped at open class events. But there are budget opportunities for
class racing too. For keelboat aficionados we previously covered a US revival of local Soling fleets in Seahorse. Closer to home, a few miles from our offices there is a healthy J/24 ‘revival’ fleet enjoying good racing every weekend. Cost… most of the boats were purchased and fettled for no more than £5,000 apiece. There are other J/24 revival fleets elsewhere in the world.
62 SEAHORSE Across La Manche from us there is a
corner of Quiberon Bay in Brittany where several dinghy clubs got together to corner the market in Laser 4000s. A cracking little starter skiff, not the latest game in town and a bit chunky on the slipway, but boats cost cents-on-the-dollar to buy com- pared with comparable newer alternatives like a 29er or 49er. And the result of this initiative by our
French friends? Often as many as 30-40 spruced-up Laser 4000s are now out on the water on a sunny weekend. Big fun and a far lower entry cost for
parents of youngsters who love to sail but cannot afford to take the ‘apparent’ next step, as well as parents with offspring not yet convinced this is the sport for them.
Laser 4000s still go fast, feel faster and the odd minor crunch, well, so what?
Back to the handicap picture So in the UK at least we have a plentiful supply of excellent, pretty foxy (fancy a 420, nipper? Seriously, Daaaad?) and well- kept non-Olympic dinghies. We have a plethora of ex-Opti teenagers for whom a fully loaded 29er is for the birds and who will now be lost to the sport. And we have club fleets that even after the transition to handicap racing are confronted with poor turnouts… Which will usually also mean much reduced bar and general revenue. A handful of big-bucks newer dinghies
will always turn out at these clubs, owned by the lucky few, usually older sailors. But
Under £700
Under £5,000
Under £1,500
Under £700
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