Grafham D-Zero Demo Day

To be honest, I'll be happy to compete in the SailJuice Series on a given handicap of 1010 in my D-Zero, until it finds its own level, though ultimately for me of course the attraction is fleet racing.

At the weekend a well sailed D-Zero finished 2nd in the club regatta at Grafham Water, sailing off a GL handicap of 1010 with the Lasers on 1117.

you would not be allowed in your EPS so last century!

Some will care, some won't... A lot don't seem to care enough to priotise the series come rain or ill wind, nagging other-halves or visiting inlaws...

Time poor maybe.?

No wonder dinghy sailing appears more and more to be a pursuit of school age children and the retired.

Grf's vision for dinghy sailing seems to be that everyone would need to. Buy into the latest design, with latest tech. every year or two. You'd be buying a new £12k boat every two years and selling it on for next to nothing as it would have been superseded.

I do exactly as you say, GRF - I buy exactly the boats I want to, and at no point has anyone stopped me, not for the last 30 years, at the point where my parents could no longer say "no". Sometimes I have bought boats where the handicap has seemed harsh for the type of water I've been sailing on. Either I've stuck with it because I like the boat, or I have changed classes to one that suits the type of water better. Occasionally, I have seen the handicaps rise on those boats in recent years, suggesting that the new system is allowing changes to reflect what real sailors are finding. Other classes, for whatever reason (results coming from one type of water would be my guess) haven't changed.

At no point have I felt that "the system" was out to get me, whether it be the RYA, my CA, other people's CA, clubs, builders or whatever. Occasionally I have come into contact with individuals with agendas of their own which are at odds with what I want to do, but that is true in any walk of life, and I would say less common in sailing than in work, say.