Fevas on fire at first ever RS Nationals!

by Jardine Media on 3 Feb 2009 Over the Australia Day long weekend, the first ever RS Nationals were held at Woollahra Sailing Club and it was one hell of an event. For the inaugural Australian RS National Championships, WSC threw open its doors to all RS boats and representatives from the RS Feva, RS 200, RS 400 and RS Vision classes hit the water for two days of fierce competition. So we don’t keep you in suspense, know now that ‘MYC’ sailed by Byron and his cousin Sam White was the best of the Fevas while ‘ABC’, ‘Clint and Lisa’ and ‘The Boat Shed’ managed creditable results in a RS Vision, RS 200 and RS 400 respectively. With the Feva World Championships booked for WSC in 2010, there’s never been a better time to get a burning hot Feva for your son or daughter. And the best thing is that if you wake up on Monday morning and it’s glorious sailing weather, you can call in sick and say with complete honesty to your boss, ‘I’m so sorry I can’t come in today, my kids got a Feva.’

Sail-World covers a lot of regattas and sailing events and over the years we’ve noticed that certain classes of boat attract particular personality types. To avoid the risk of substantial litigation, we won’t go into this topic today in any great detail, suffice to say that ‘you show me the man (or woman) and we’ll tell you what they sail.’ The Sail-World team has become quite good at pairing a person to a boat. If we’re at a regatta and a hyperactive, super competitive type bounces up, then we nod and smile and mouth the single word ‘XXXXXXX’ to each other.

It’s actually a game you can become quite good at with a bit of practice: try it yourself at the next mixed classes regatta you attend.

Where I’m going with all this is that the Sail-World team recently noticed a shared characteristic among the RS class sailors: they’re all funny. Funny as in ha-ha funny, not funny as in strange funny, but I’m sure that there are those among the RS camp who would dispute this distinction. The first clue we had to this emerging species characteristic was the names of the boats in the pre-regatta registration forms. As hardened sailing journalists we’re almost immune to particularly good boat names, even the sound of ‘Hey Baby!’ giving a radio sked fails to impress (picture this: gruff, male baritone voice slowly intoning ‘hey baby, hey baby, hey baby…’ during a coastal passage. Which reminds me of the joke about airline pilots- it’s uncool to show any emotion during a radio broadcast, someone rather clever once noted that they put out any transmission in a deadpan drawl, for example ‘copy tower, the wings have fallen off- bzzzzz- white noise- the wings have fallen off’).

The RS boat names that we thought were particularly good were ‘The Pimps of the Sea’ closely followed by ‘The Boat that Floats’ and ‘Dodgey’ found a special place in our hearts. ‘The Wet Dreamers’ was also kind of obvious but strangely cute. Some names were matter of fact: ‘Jack’, ‘Kookaburra’ and ‘Clint and Lisa’ (raced, you guessed it, by Clinton and Lisa Wade-Lehmann). Some were descriptive: ‘The Boat Shed’ and ‘The Boat Yard’ but all had a certain panache; you could tell these boats were sailed by people who loved being out on the water and knew what they were on about, but liked being back on dry land for some capital ‘F’ fun.

Fun in the RS classes is certain to build ahead of the 2010 World Championships and already smart clubs are taking note with many introducing RS fleets to their members. Middle Harbour Yacht Club has six new Fevas for team racing; they were looking good during the club’s launch of their 2009 junior sailing development program on Sunday. Woollahra Sailing Club has introduced a Feva fleet and we hear that two other large Sydney clubs are looking at following their example. The day after the RS Nationals, Chris Caldecoat from Performance Sailcraft, the Australian company which distributes and manufactures RS, reported that he was ‘out of stock’: six more Fevas were on their way down to Melbourne and two were heading north to private buyers in Queensland. With the World Championships due to start the day after Boxing Day at WSC in 2010, Caldecoat reports that parents are thinking ahead and buying Fevas now to give their kids time to get competitive.

Here’s WSC manager and principle coach Adam South’s report on the first day of the RS Nationals:

Race One:
Both fleets started in a blustery north west breeze, at times tipping the wind speed gauge over 30knts. Thrills and spills where the order of the day, with excellent sailing by all crews. Byron White with his cousin Sam showed a clean pair of heels to take race one with some great sail handling. Of note was the performance of Kim Counter and Nicola South the first all girl crew in 5th in race one.

The open fleet saw the 400's powering away in the big wind with all crews enjoying great down hill rides. Lisa Wade-Lehmann, sailing with her husband
Clinton in a 200, could not contain her delight with the acceleration of the boat downhill. A big smile on all crews after the finish said it all.

Race Two:
With the breeze doing a 180 and building to 14-16Knts both fleets got away after a quick turn around of the course by the PRO Jeremy Attkinson and his crew. The racing in the Feva fleet was exciting with the top ten positions changing continuously. Again Byron and Sam showed that a week of intense sailing had paid of by edging out a fast finishing Liam Benett and Brodie Crossman from RPA. In the Open division, another girl shone through, with Alex South and Shaun Wells sailing a 200 beating out the other 400's for a well deserved 2nd over the line.

Results as of 16:24 on January 25, 2009

Overall

Sailwave Scoring Software 2.00 build 1
www.sailwave.com

Results as of 15:48 on January 25, 2009

Overall

Sailwave Scoring Software 2.00 build 1
www.sailwave.com

Want to be part of the RS fun?

See the following sites for more information:
http://www.lasersailing.com.au
http://rssailing.com.au

Performance Sailcraft contact details:
Performance Sailcraft Pty Ltd
Lot 7 Catamaran Road, Ourimbah NSW 2258
Australia