29ers

What with my 29er being the first one into Singapore, Julian Bethwaite being at the ISAF conference at the time and in his words "being anal about making sure the first boats in a set up right" I got to spend 1/2 a day with Julian getting my boat set up correctly.

Some of the pearls of wisdom - 29ers get lighter with age and the only problem you may get in time is the ply frames in the hull rotting out if you don't take both bungs out when not being used.

Having a good track record of event wins only means the monkeys in the boat were fast - not the boat itself. 

The hulls last a long time, and people call them fast boats because they feel faster than other boats. We had 2 boats one made in 2002 and the other in 2005, they both felt quick. But we always used the 2002 as a training boat and therefore with an old mast but we were still very quick in it. In fact looking back on it now it was going very fast at the last squad training before the worlds. The newer boat was kept for big events only,  and we used it at the worlds this year. With our older boat made in 2002 we chartered it to another team at the worlds.

Both boats were weighed at the worlds the old boat being 1.5kg underweight and the new boat was 2.9kg overweight!!!!  Which was a shock! By the end of the worlds our old boat beat us (1st and 2nd), but it was sailed my very good sailors.

So the age of the boat does not matter if the boat is set-up, down to weight and sailed by the right sailors.