Shearwater Catamaran National Championship at Pagham Yacht Club

Nigel & Sarah Stuart win the Shearwater nationals at Pagham © Bridget Branagan-Freeman

The 2014 Shearwater Catamaran National championships were held at Pagham Yacht Club on the south coast between the 24th and 29th August. This was the 58th event in the class's history attracting 16 highly competitive boats.

The weeks weather started with a whimper and ended with a bang and presented challenges for both the boats and race officer alike. The practice day saw barely a puff and by Friday gusts were recorded at force 8.

This years clear winners with 6 wins were outgoing class chairman Nigel Stuart and his wife Sarah on "CROWNS" a new carbon fibre boat built by Nigel himself. The racing was extremely tight with no boat willing to give quarter in any race. Close and inshore racing provided a spectacle for the crowds gathered on the beach and with the added bonus of a Spiftfire performing aerobatics and buzzing the fleet during Thursdays racing. Ben Farnborough who had flown in specially from the USA took his boat "Genesis" to a convincing 2nd place overall and winning the final race of the week. 3rd place was reserved to the class stalwart Dr Greg Wilcox and his new 14 yr old crew William.

A special mention and thanks must go to the volunteers from Pagham Yacht Club who provided excellent racing and onshore facilities and entertainment throughout the week."

Overall Results:
If you finished in the top ten at the Shearwater nationals then enter your Gear Guide information here

Class history

From its original form of two canoes tied together by Olympic canoeists Roland and Francis Prout the Shearwater III quickly became the world's first Catamaran Class and was granted National status by the RYA in 1956. Designed specifically to be a "Restricted Development" class it has always been popular with those who want to experiment and those characteristics are clearly noticeable on every Shearwater. As early as 1972 the Class adopted the use of a symmetric spinnaker, the first cat class to do so and today development and experimentation with build materials, sail plan and foils is still very much part of the fleet.