Competitive Cat Racing in the North

With both being at your weight you may find the Dart a little underpowered when sailing two up. You may find an Inter 20, F18 or a Tornado a better choice but I cannot comment on the sailing 1 up of these, certainly not an option for the Tornado though.

For competitive racing what do you mean club, open or national level? Certainly at Open level the F18 offers good competitive racing whilst the F18 and Tornado offer good racing at National level. All 3 are good for long distance events.

SNECCA in process of building new website and sorting programme for next year including the long distance 4" race on the Forth Next year , not forgetting the Flag ship Bi annual event "THE LOCHNESS MONSTER CAT RACE " next edition due 2009 , but don't time fly .

ask any SNECCA questions in between and I'm sure you will get speedy responses .

Furthest down south SNECCA events to date have been at South Shields who have a good cat fleet , competitive too

If you want to sail 1-up and 2-up the Dart 18 is best for you, initially even if you are a bit on the heavy side when 2-up, it is a good learning ground. The others classes suggested are not really an option 1-up. The Dart 18 remains the most active Cat Fleet in the Country by some way. They have a very active TT circuit and do a training weekend in April which usually has about 20 new punters taking part. There are lots of boats available from £500 up as it is a well established class. Have a look at www.dart18.com. As Ian says the clubs are a little distance from you. The RYYC at Bridlington has a decent size fleet of Dart 18s but if you want inland through the year sailing your best bet is probably Carsington Water just South of Matlock.

Another option you could consider is to buy 2 single handed boats and have one each. In that case it would be worth considering the Sprint 15 (which was previously the Dart 15). This is the second biggest and most active fleet in the country. We have a summer and winter circuit and do 2 weekend training sessions each year (one in the North and another in the South). Next year we hope to do the Northern one at Filey but have yet to fix the date. The fleet is very friendly and it opens up more options of Northern Clubs. There are about 8 boats at Halifax near you and they race regularly and travel so that would be your obvious choice. Carsington is further but has about 25 boats and they are very active - including on the training front. We have our Winter Traveller at Carsington on 8 December.  Beaver near Doncaster is a small lake with about 10 boats but they have been going through a quiet spell. Filey has 8 boats but they do not race often. Any way give www.sprint15.com a look and the clubs page is quite helpful.

There is also a very active forum on both web sites if you want to follow up either option.

Cheers

Bob (Sprint 15 Events Secretary)