Photos from Chew Inlands…!!

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What’s a Photo of a 505 Doing Here….??!!

Posted on March 5, 2017 by flyingfifteen

Well, the main point about this boat, is that it is the 505 belonging to our very own FF Champion, Richard Lovering. At least now you know how technical he can get!!

I always lusted after a 505 as a teenager, and only managed to get one season racing one as crew at Queen Mary many years ago. They just excite me to look at.

You can see here that Richard has made provision to pull his jib sheet inboard of the tank and this is what prompted our conversation about the same issue for the new FF jib – but Richard thinks it wont be necessary in our Class – phew!

The next photo shows the adjustable clew outhaul in two dimensions. I noticed the Osprey stand had a boat from Hartley’s with a similar arrangement.

So now you know what rake Alan sails on…!!

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Dinghy Show Boat ….!!

Posted on March 5, 2017 by flyingfifteen

Went to the Dinghy Show yesterday. A great day actually!!

On the stand we had Coweslip, looking… well… Royal…!! It was obviously very different back then – no toe straps for the helmsman, and one strap for the crew!

Of more technical interest was the new boat – 4047 fitted out by P&B. In fact, I think it was Alan’s most recent boat and may be on the market if you want it!!

As such, it was in reasonably standard P&B trim but did have some interesting kit in a couple of places.

We first saw adjustable bridles of this kind a couple of years ago on Graham and Chris’ boat. It certainly caused a lot of discussion on the stand. Many people seemed to wonder how often you’d use it, but I must say when I asked Graham the same thing he said “most outings”. Interesting.

I like the cutaway in the jib turning block carrier too.

Perhaps of more interest was that the boat was rigged with the new jib. At first, lots of people didn’t even notice (!). Alan though has moved to a twin track jib car system as we commonly used to have some years ago.

The emphasis here might be to have a track right on the inboard edge so as to have the ability to sheet it closer to the centre line. Apparently Geoff Bayliss’ new boat has something similar (I’ve not seen it though), with both cars in place. I must admit when we used to have two parallel plunger type tracks we used them a lot. I had the opportunity to ask Richard Lovering of Hyde Sails what He thought of sheeting the new jib closer to the centre line, Richard said that the new sail caused a lot of that effect anyway – as the centre of fullness is much further forward now it might anyway set a couple of inches further inboard. I think Richard said he might have to think about redesigning the main to match.

There was more than one conversation on the stand that maybe the old jib would be quicker in the light. If so, it’ll be hard to tell anyway!!

Phil Evans was telling me that he has come up with a smart little “two length” jib halyard idea, so that owners can easily interchange between the two sails. That’s the way to go for me, I suspect.

This photo was mainly to illustrate two points:-

(i) the boat wasn’t rigged fully for its spinnaker. It had a chute cover, but no sock in the cockpit. Interesting. No bags either. Perhaps they stuff the sail back under the foredeck as per “FooF”.

(ii) The protest flag. Now most dinghies have been relieved of the obligation to carry a protest flag, but at 20 feet, if I recall correctly we are obliged to carry one. But how many of us do?? Followers of the World Championship reports will know that it was eventually decided in the protest room and that the two main protagonists both flew their Code B, little red flags.

I wonder what happened to mine? I’d better order up another from P&B…!!