Displaying items by tag: high performance sailing

25th September 2013

National Yacht Club to Promote Skiff & Foiling Sailing at Special Presentation Evening

#foiling– Interested in those skiffs or mad foiling machines? Dublin's National Yacht Club (NYC) is taking a leading role in developing high performance dinghy sailing by organising a presentation evening and debate at its Dun Laoghaire clubhouse on the subject of faster sailing. Former youth champion Ben Lynch (and older brother of Finn, the Laser U21 world champion) is organising the session on Friday, 4th October at 18:30 in the NYC.

The aim of the "JUST DO IT" initiative, according to sailing manager Olivier Proveur, is to 'spark something useful for all sailors interested in going a bit faster...'

The programme will cover how to get started and will cover Skiffs, 49er, 29ers and Moth dinghy sailing. (Don't forget the foiling Laser, Ben – Ed)

A programme and poster for the session is available for download below. The go-ahead club was previously in the vanguard of promoting solo and short–handed sailing and held a similar evening at the NYC in December 2009. This Summer it hosted the Route des Princes stop over, a round Europe race for ultra fast trimarans that had more than its fair share of drama on Dublin Bay.

The objectives of the October evening are:

- To inform potential new comers
- To see what level of interest there is to get into that scene...create an attendance / database list
- To detail what we are trying to achieve by coming together and what are potential routes to continue on from here if interested. (Create Yahoo Group? Facebook page? Committing to program to get involved with particular boats or to try a few, training hard in one class to perform)
- To promote the around the island challenge
- To explore the room to develop a series for Hi Perf Dinghies in Dun Laoghaire, within or outside of DBSC, elsewhere in Ireland....

Currently, club members Tadhg and Sean Donnelly are campaigning a 29er dinghy and the NYC's Olympic sailor Annalise Murphy is heading to Hawaii shortly for the Moth World championships.

Published in National YC

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About the 29er Skiff Dinghy

The 29er is a one-design double-handed, single trapeze skiff for youth sailors.

There is an active class in Ireland, just one of the 38-countries from across all continents now racing the high-performance skiff.

The 29er is one of the latest dinghy classes to arrive in Ireland and has a 50/50 split between boys and girls.

The class like to describe the boat as "The most popular skiff for sailors who want to go fast!".

Derived from the Olympic class 49er class and designed by Julian Bethwaite the 29er was first produced in 1998.

Two sailors sail the 29er, one on trapeze.

The 6.25-metre high rig features a fractional asymmetrical spinnaker; a self-tacking jib decreases the workload of the crew, making manoeuvres more efficient and freeing the crew to take the mainsheet upwind and on two-sail reaches.

The 15.00 m2 spinnaker rigging set-up challenges crews to be fit and coordinated, and manoeuvres in the boat require athleticism due to its lack of inherent stability and the high speed with which the fully battened mainsail and jib power up.

The 74kg weight hull is constructed of fibreglass-reinforced polyester in a foam sandwich layout.

The fully battened mainsail and jib are made from a transparent Mylar laminate with orange or red Dacron trimming, while the spinnaker is manufactured from ripstop Nylon.

The mast is in three parts - an aluminium bottom and middle section, with a polyester-fibreglass composite tip to increase mast bend and decrease both overall weights, and the capsizing moment a heavy mast tip can generate. Foils are aluminium or fibreglass.

About the ILCA/Laser Dinghy

The ILCA, formerly known as the Laser, is the most produced boat in the world, with 220,000 units built since 1971.

It's easy to see why the single-handed dinghy has won the title of the most widely distributed boat of all time.

The Laser is a one-design dinghy, the hulls being identical but three rigs that can be used according to the size and weight of the sailor.

The class is international, with sailors from 120 countries. The boat has also been an Olympic class since 1996, being both the men's and women's singlehanded dinghy.

Three rigs are recognised by the International Laser Class Association (ILCA):

ILCA 4: sail of 4.70m2

ILCA 6: sail of 5.76 m2

ILCA 7: sail of 7.06 m2