The RS100 Owners Thread

Welcome and thanks for flushing out from the pondmonkey that he puts winding me up in the same category as grf-baiting. Find a gun and shoot me now. [yup, there is lots of banter here]

Ignore the forum tosh about a 100 not being sailable on ponds - I've been sailing mine on Frensham Pond week in, week out  for nearly 3 years and find it at least as much (albeit different) fun to racing on the circuit. But your place will be brill, particularly on the days when the beat is downtide and downwind is uptide.

Rest assured we will sort out the omission of the 7.2 from the recent rule change - it will be addressed PDQ I am sure. 

If you have a go in the 8.4, just make sure you max out the kicker upwind when you are overpowered and as James (pondmonkey) says, get at least a 4:1 on the cunno (8:1 is allowed) and pull the living daylights out of it. I lead both parts of the cunningham down one side of the boom as it gives far more travel to play with even if it looks a bit odd. (I'll take a pic and post it up when I can) Let both controls right off as you approach the ww mark tho and don't try and gybe with the vang on unless you want to check your slot gaskets. A key thing on gybes is making sure the boom is definitely coming over  (i use a gybing strop) but then get to the other side of the boat before the boom lands - and of course, speed is your friend.

If you are one-sail reaching, the bow likes to bury itself (I've had the whole foredeck under water even on Frensham in a huge gust) so sit as far back as you can get. With the kite up, this is seldom an issue, waves notwithstanding. The boat is also far more saleable on a one-sail reach with the plate half up, whereas with kite up the board needs to stay in place or you will get lee helm which is slow.

Don't feel shy to ask anything here or on the class forum - but you will get more sense on the latter, more filter-requiring banter here.

The next UK event is the Sprints at Rutland in mid June - lots of short races, so good boat handling practice. And there is another 7.2 at Gurnard on the IoW. We'd love to see you there or at the Nats at HISC. The craic at 100 events is good fun - I think it may be we still all have that pioneering feeling and some staying power (unlike a couple of high profile contributors here who kept the 100s for about 25 minutes)

I think the 7.4 would be a big reduction.

Stick with the 8.4 and hike loads!!!

Cheers,

Keith.

This thread fired up again with regards the rule change, which as you rightly point out doesn't include the lesser spotted 7.2 sailors.  This is perhaps a more pertinent point though, as if you drill down further, most of the 10.2 sailors in the national results have buggered off anyway.  The rest of this thread is really just banter and piss taking, especially with Fab100 and iGRF... you should buy Clive's book if you haven't already done so.  

As for iGRF... well here's the top of his head and the bottom of his shoes... the rest you should probably ignore for the benefit of your sanity.

With regards my own credentials, well assuming you're the same Hanna who commented on an RS100 video I posted on youtube a while ago, well you can see I'm not very useful either. 

Now to your question on pond sailing; well it's really very, very simple.  For those of us who live in urban sprawl or even worse, the Midlands, we can only go sailing on ponds unless we travel miles and miles.  And you can guarantee that when we do make that journey, permission from better halves gained, stocked up on Ginsters for the journey, fate will inevitably conspire to send in a proper skunking so we ruin it for even one else.  The best thing to do is to not tell pond sailors when/where you're going sailing, then they won't suck the joy from the skies with their funny accents and lack of tidal expertise.  

Now let's be fair, it's better than 'not sailing', in the same way as going to a dry slope ski centre is better than being beaten up by 12 year olds down the park for wearing 80's 'disco skates'.  But in comparison to sailing on the sea or on a nice river, pond sailing really is rather lame.  Now we'll all tell you sea sailors that sailing on our ponds makes us more tactically aware and better at reading wind shifts.  Maybe that's true to an extent, in some people, but it's a poor trade off to the real thing on the salty stuff.  So you need to take any comments from pond sailors with a pinch of salt... which is pretty feckin' harsh considering we don't have much of the stuff to start with.... except of course, in those Ginsters slices.

As for the 8.4, go for it.  A warm evening race series might be the opportune moment to un-roll it and get it wet.  If in doubt add an extra purchase to the cunningham and welly the living hell out of it.  No one would protest you, RS100 sailors and ex RS100 are many things, but ultimately they're all gentle folk and very good spirited....  despite what nonsense you might read here.  

Enjoy your boat- keep posting.        

Anyway, I'm not going to wade into this discussion to much,  as I think I'd loose the will to live, but I thought I'd introduce myself as I'm one of those lessor spotted RS100 7.4 rig sailors. (Yes, a lass, and yes, none too heavy). I've also got an 8.4 sail which I hope to start using in lighter winds once I've gained more confidence and experience with the boat.  However, there are a few points I want to add to the discussion:

- I bought a new RS100 at the end of last year having sailed it out in Minorca. It's a fair whack out of the bank balance and was paid for out of the sale of my motorbike. The cost of the boat, compounded with the slow turnover of second hand boats, is what I believe is holding up the expansion of the class. This isn't a negative, and I don't believe it's representative of anything being wrong with the class, it's just one of those things and the consistent feedback I've had from a lot of sailors I've talked to. No doubt the class will have a notable upturn in numbers in the future once the second hand price drops and the turnover increases.

- I'd like to see something about the 7.4 sail in the proposed rule changes. I'm 70-73kg (depending on how much gym work I do - more gym = more weight) and don't expect to ever put my 7.4 sail to bed entirely as I believe it'll be reserved for higher winds, of which we get quite a lot down in Eastbourne.

- I'm new to sailing, and even newer to sailing forums, so forgive my ignorance - but what is behind the comments about pond sailing and the 100? I'm a costal sailor, as in the choppy salty stuff, so am feeling a bit oblivious to it all.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to say, but I've forgotten and this post is long enough already. 

Hello, by the way!