want a RS but not sure it's suitable

Hi,

Hopefully someone can help, my girlfriend and I have been sailing about 6 months (girlfriend slightly more) a mirror dinghy on an estuary, our combined weight is prob no more than 21 stone. We want to get a new boat and really fancy one from the RS range. We are looking to spend around £2000. We want a boat that we will develop into and get into raceing (fast :) would this be a suitable boat for us on what I've said above?

Any thoughts really appreciated

Thanks

Jack

Definately try the Tasar, they were designed for male-female crews.

The main thing to think about is what boats are sailed at your club. Don't buy a Tasar (or whatever) if you'll be the only one every weekend. Unless you want to concentrate on the open circuit!

If the club has a decent fleet of 200s, go with it. You can't enjoy getting better each month if you havent got another similar boat to gauge yourself against.

The 600's a singlehanded boat with a trapeze, and not very stable (from what I've heard, I've never sailed one) and the 800 is a doublehander with 2 trapezes - it's a really nice boat but it's pretty advanced with quite a lot of sail area. I'd love to know where you found one in budget though - I've yet to find one for much less than £4000!

It might be worth hanging onto the Mirror over the winter, and then visiting the dinghy show in the spring. There are hundreds of different dinghies out there that might suit you, from Miracles (another Jack Holt design a little like a racier Mirror) through Fireflies (another boat where there are many male/female combinations) or GP14's to the more modern designs. The advantage of the older designs is that you have a wider choice of 2nd hand boats, but won't get the simplicity of an asymmetric spinnaker. Go along, arrange to try them out and see which suits you best.

I started in National 12s with a girlfriend at the time, with relatively little dinghy experience - I heard a lot of the 'too tippy' comments from the owners of other classes we tried out but in hindsight it was the best decision. 

The early learning curve can certainly be quite steep but you'll find you're boat handling will progress pretty quickly, £2000 should give you a good choice of boats  that'll be very competitive a club level and its a good class for your weight and for estuary sailing.

see: www.national12.org


Edited by DiscoBall