Solo class Vintage Championship 2025 at Leigh-on-Sea Sailing Club - Preview
by Will Loy 8 Jul 2025 19:33 BST
12 July 2025
Solo Vintage Championship at Leigh-on-Sea © Will Loy
Leigh on Sea Sailing Club is home to the largest fleet of Vintage Solos in the World and on Sat 12th July will host the seventh running of the Vintage Championship.
Like thoroughbred horses galloping around a make-shift course, unaware that they were laid out to pasture decades ago, these fine specimens just do not know when to quit. Their owners too, display similar traits, one could argue that some should have gone to the knackers yard years ago but the Solo is forever and technological advances in epoxy repairs, medicine and joint replacements keep Solos and they're sailors strong. Good job too as generation X, fed on T foils and Sail GP media, seem to have missed out on the fun you can have trying to push a 70kg hull through the water rather than over it.
The Solo, with its distinctive bow profile presents a challenge classes such as the Ok, Phantom and Streaker miss out on and that is to say, in a short chop it is nothing like putting a hot knife through butter.
The Solo design, first pencilled by Jack Holt in 1956 (next year is our 70th Anniversary) has seen plenty of development but like a small tributary, initially V-shaped and narrow has, over many decades and sometimes painfully slowly, evolved into a full blown river. This metamorphosis has only been possible through the clever + and - of 5mm tolerance Jack and the Solo Committee included in the first rules of the class, a tiny detail aimed directly at the amateur builder but providing huge scope for the professional builder to explore.
The above waterline shape of course has no real bearing on speed but the addition in the 70s of Lovett type gunwales made hiking comfortable. In the 90s, maximum height side tank dimensions from Thresher reduced water scooping during over zealous roll tacks though the overall aesthetic looked a bit funky and the 2000s saw a fad towards hikers and away from flared gunwales, Boon instead maximising their height at the sheer line (an imaginary point on the top of the gunwale determined by an invisible line using the angle of the upper chine). Straight leg hiking being the optimum technique for leverage and better back health.
The original design incorporated floor battens either side to stiffen the hull and the centreboard case was glued and screwed to the hog but araldite and brass screws were no match for water and time. Bob Beckett sunk his cases into the hog, seeking forgiveness rather than permission and thankfully it was voted legal at the annual general meeting sometime in the eighties.
The Seamark Nunn GRP hulls had their moment in the spotlight and that was in the mid 70s but unfortunately water ingress and therefore soft floors were common. I did see a hull which had structural bars from side tank to case and I guess these were legal once!
Another rule change allowed the builder to provide a small gap between batten and floor. thus allowing the water to drain out through the self bailers, all small incremental changes to improve overall speed.
Thresher introduced the female mould build in the mid 90s and double thickness floors were introduced, negating the need for floor battens and the uncluttered look was a real game changer for the sexiness of the class.
Early Holt designs were very much down the middle regarding underwater shape where as Alec Stone pushed the tolerances in rocker and beam, his hulls winning countless Championships with him steering and also in the hands of some great sailors including John Conway Jones. Positioning of the centreboard case was also explored but early Solo rigs were upright by today's standards so the centreboard position and therefore centre of resistance were well forward to balance the C of E, today's raked rig requires the case to be at its furthest back position and we still raise the centreboard to keep the weather helm at bay (centreboard is pivoted).
Thresher, very much an innovator in the 80s-90s cleverly reversed the rudder shape in it's stock, bringing it almost under the transom rather than the traditionally raked back (ILCA) style, again reducing weather helm.
Lovett had played around with all sorts of shapes in the late 70s, a number of his hulls obtaining dispensation and one in particular, with convex bottom panel was, I understand rejected. The shape that became unbeatable was notable for its deep rocker to promote tacking and yet flatter at the transom to aid planing time.
High Performance Sailboats played around with several shapes in the select number of hulls they built in the mid 80s, mine had a rocker as flat as a pancake and the chine at station 1 (just forward of the mast foot) had a very unusual kink, manipulating a Solo hull it seems is a bit like squeezing a square into a circle. I am pretty sure the other hulls had equally unusual measurements, albeit at the other ends of the tolerance spectrum.
Severn Sailboats composite hulls were all pretty much down the middle in regards to shape but they pushed for changes to the rules for cosmetic reasons, adding a thin veneer to case sides and transom, these were the days when no-one wanted to buy a plastic Solo! That said, Peter Bond was a formidable builder of Championship winning Fireballs and it would not surprise me if the Severns were ahead of the game in terms of weight distribution. Another Severn inspired change saw the transom thickened and this negated the need for the small knee which strengthened the area and almost always went rotten!
The early 90s saw the introduction of the Kevin Gosling Solo, drawing on the speed and beauty of the Lovett but with an attention to detail that would now be classed as obsessive and these hulls proved very successful in the hands of Carveth, Falcon and Houston to name just three.
Again, the hull did not push the boundaries in terms of tolerance but its success was down to its symmetry and finish. Miles produced some of the quickest Solos in the late 90s, the ends of the hull were extremely light, just don't bash them into Andy Miles Solo on the start line.
Builders were very keen to promote early planing and great emphasis was therefore put into the angle of the lower chine at section 1 to get the bow out of the water.
Tony Thresher had been finessing his bow profile to obtain maximum waterline for many years, some of the early 4000s hulls did this well, as long as you were of a John Greenwood type physique.
The beauty of the wooden hull of course was and still is the ability to tweak the jig in order to adjust the hulls shape, increasing or reducing rocker curve, adjusting the aft section, widening or narrowing the beam and as the Solo hull is measured at 5 sections, the scope for tiny differences, matched to the sailor weight and where they race is limitless. I would say that over the first 44 years, over twenty professional builders dipped their toes into the dark art of Solo building and I will not even mention the amateur input.
Years of AGM rule proposals, resolute members votes for and against and calm balanced advice from our Honourable Chief Measurers, Martin Grounds, Jim Gates, Ron Green and Gordon Barclay have shaped the boat and the kind of sailors who race it and we may never experience AGM's like it again but maybe that is not a bad thing, we have a great product.
The modern Solo, almost without exception constructed in FRP rules the waves and Dave Winder pretty much monopolises the class with his two shapes, the Mk 1 and Mk 2. This product has seen the fleet grow to incredible numbers and now vintage Solos are a rarity across the UK.
Unfortunately, the FRP hull, circa 2000 is banned from the Vintage Championship, its superior weight distribution is something the wooden counterpart struggled to attain but maybe in fifty years they can have their own vintage event.
This Saturday, we celebrate the ingenuity of those early craftsmen who spent many late nights and early mornings struggling to find the magic formula that would propel their build to the front of the fleet. Whether you have a Holt, Stone, Beasley, Lovett, Uttley, Avacraft, Beckett, Severn Sailboats, Don Marine, Young, Crawshaw, Thresher, Miles or Gosling, you are now the ambassadors of the legacy that Jack created all those years ago.
Please do join me on the water at the seventh running of the Vintage Championship at Leigh on Sea, first start is 1pm and we have three quick races planned before the water disappears! Do hitch up your pride and joy and come and show it off.
I will be commentating on the event with interviews and race analysis via the WhatsApp Group so please join and follow before the event starts. The later you join the more you miss.
See you on the water.