D-Zero and RS Aero Review

In March 2015, Steve Cockerill of Rooster Sailing fame published an account on his blog of testing the RS Aero and the Devoti D-Zero in 20 knots of breeze (gusting to 25) at Stokes Bay Sailing Club in England.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last year or so, the Devoti D-Zero and the RS Aero are two new lightweight single-handers which were both launched at the UK Dinghy Show in March 2014. Both of have sold in large numbers in the UK. Here in the USA (where I live) there isn't a strong distributor network for the D-Zero, so the RS Aero has been much more successful. (So far.)

Living under a rock

Steve's review of the two boats is very comprehensive and covers pretty much everything you would want to know from what it was like to launch and recover them off a lee shore in strong winds, to how it felt to sail them on different points of sail, to how easy it was to adjust the controls, etc. etc. etc. You can read his review here.

Inevitably Steve also compared the performance and feel of the D-Zero and RS Aero with the more ancient but extremely popular Laser.  And I was particularly amused by how Steve chose to describe the sensation of sailing downwind in the three different boats.

He writes that, "As a Laser sailor who works very hard to get my Laser to manoeuvre, I normally feel like I am dancing with Ann Widdecombe." 68-year-old Ann Widdecombe, a former British Conservative MP, appeared on the British TV dancing competition program Strictly Come Dancing which is presumably where Steve gained his impression on what it would be like to dance with her...

"Works very hard to get her to manoeuvre"

By contrast Steve found that the D-Zero was "eager and responsive" downwind and was moved to comment that it was more like dancing with Caroline Flack. The 36-year-old Miss Flack is an English TV presenter who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2014 and actually won it.

"Eager and responsive"

I don't think Steve liked the RS Aero quite as much as the D-Zero. He reported, "The Aero was very stable and took the downwind easily whether I opted for wave avoidance or just took her straight downwind by the lee. Pretty much predictable downwind sailing. You might find a hint of disappointment in my words, as I do like to do a bit of a dance, and this reminded me of dancing with Judy Murray – sportie robust but rather stiff."

56-year-old Judy Murray is a Scottish tennis coach and the mother of professional tennis player Andy Murray (currently ranked #2 in the world.) Of course she also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing. How else would Steve Cockerill know what she is like as a dance partner?

"Sportie, robust but rather stiff"

And that, of course, is the answer to yesterday's photo quiz post. Thanks to everyone who took a shot at it. Sorry this one was so obscure!

Sailing Photo Quiz - Really

Thanks to Captain JP for the inspiration for this post.

What is the sailing connection between these three photos?

3 Amazing Things I Learned From Sailing Blogs

It's amazing what you can learn from sailing blogs.

Only this week on three different sailing blogs I learned that some science that I thought I knew was totally wrong, I discovered some excellent marital guidance counseling, and I became aware of a solemn duty that nobody had told me of before.

1. How Tides Really Work

I thought I knew how the moon and the sun cause the tides on earth. But apparently the explanation I had heard (and which I suspect 99% of my readers believe) is actually totally wrong. The blogger known as Keep Reaching who writes the excellent Laser sailing blog Reaching Broadly has a link to a video that puts us straight.

WRONG!

CORRECT!

2. How Sailing Can Ruin a Marriage

I have learned all sorts of useful stuff about sailing on Damian's excellent blog The Final Beat. But I didn't expect to read that sailing might ruin my marriage. Don't be like Damian. Learn from his mistakes. Let this be an awful warning to you.

If you want this...

but she wants this...

then you will have too much of this...

and you might end up doing this...

and will never get to this.

3. Why It's Your Duty As A Sailor To Drink Rum.

I am always looking for a good excuse to drink rum. But I never knew before that it is our duty as amateur sailors to drink rum.

Thanks to John Vigor's excellent blog which is cleverly titled John Vigor: Blog I have learned a lot about the history of sailing and rum - not to mention futtock shrouds - and why this means we absolutely have to drink rum.

Futtock shrouds

A mug

Some rum

I think I'll have a tot of rum now and take a nap.

Looking at my Feet

Looking at my feet

Before heading off on my vacation in the BVI last month, I downloaded a copy of Nick Craig's book Helming to Win to my Kindle. After reading Damian's review of this book on his excellent sailing blog The Final Beat, I was eagerly anticipating learning some new tricks to improve my sailing.




I think I read most of the book while sitting on airplanes and/or sitting in airports while waiting to sit on airplanes.

I guess there was also a bit of time for reading too while I was at the Bitter End Yacht Club i.e. when I was not actually sailing or kayaking or eating or drinking or walking back and forth between our "tree house for grown-ups" and the places for drinking and eating, and the places for sailing and kayaking and other good stuff.

Tree house for grown-ups

Place for sailing and kayaking and other good stuff

Place for eating

Place for drinking

Where was I? Where am I? Oh yes. Nick Craig's book.

There's a lot of good advice in it, but one thing that caught my attention early in the book was the chapter on Where to Look when Racing. Nick says there are 5 modes (places to look.)

1. Your feet
2. The telltales on your sail
3. The water
4. Spotting the next few shifts
5. The big picture


Of course there are times when you need to use each one of these modes - yes, even mode 1 - but generally speaking, as you become a better sailor, you should be spending most of the times in modes 4 and 5, with modes 1, 2 and 3 coming instinctively. Your boat handling should be slick enough without having to look at your feet, you should be able to sail fast without staring hypnotically at the telltales all the time, and a fleeting glance should let you know what the wind will do in the immediate future.

Hmmm.

This is certainly an area in which I could improve. I think I spend way too much time looking at my telltales to focus on boat speed (mode 2.) I might occasionally look upwind to see if a gust or a lull is coming (mode 3.)

As for spotting the next few shifts, I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have been able to do that. No, wait that's an exaggeration. I can remember only one single time in my whole racing career when I was in mode 4.

As for mode 5. The big picture is usually that most of the fleet are way ahead of me. What help is it to focus on that?



Turn out I was wrong. I am not even in mode 2 a lot of the time.

Here is a picture of me racing with the Newport Laser frostbite fleet on the Sunday before Christmas.

It looks like I am in the process of rounding a leeward mark and still sheeting in.

Am I looking up the course to see where the stronger wind might be?

Am I trying to see where the next shift - or even better, the next few shifts - are coming from?

Am I checking out the big picture of what the sailors ahead of me are doing?

No. I am not.

I am looking down at something in the boat.

Not my feet perhaps.  But there's nothing on my foredeck that's going to give me any useful information for the next leg of the course.

I am sailing in mode 1! Ugh!



One thing I learned from this photo is that I need an external view - a coach, a video, a photo - to remind me from time to time what I am doing wrong when I am sailing.

Maybe this year I will finally get around to buying a GoPro camera and videoing my own practice sessions.

As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot by just watching."

And you can learn a lot by reading this book...

Damian's review of Helming to Win by Nick Craig

Weather for Sailing on Sunday

Hmmm!

31mph winds gusting to 59mph at 1pm.

Getting stronger later in the afternoon.

And raining.



I expect any minute now we will get an email from the fleet captain telling us it's going to be an epic day for sailing because the temperature will be in the 50s!

A Sailor Looks Back on 2015

2015 was another funny old year.

Inevitably I will remember it as the year of the RS Aero.

Let's see what I blogged about...

---

In January, as usual, I was pondering my New Year's Resolutions. To resolve or not to resolve; that is the question. Eventually I decided to ignore what Eric Twiname and Dennis Conner said, and instead to follow the advice of Samuel Beckett and Damian from The Final Beat blog, not to mention inspiration from Jayne Mansfield and The Two Ronnies.

The Two Ronnies 

with someone who is not Jayne Mansfield.

Sorry about that.

The plan was to
1. Envy more.
2. Do more than those guys do.
3. Fail again.
4. Fail better.

It didn't exactly work out because "those guys" did even more.

But I did achieve #1 and #3.

Oh well!



February's blogging was a little sparse, touching on such topics as Janet Jackson's breast, how to get from Rhodes to Rhodes, and why America still seems strange to me even after living here for over XXV years. Nothing to see here. Let's move along.



March 2015 is a month that will go down in sailing history for being the first time that an RS Aero was sailed in Newport, Rhode Island. Or anywhere in Rhode Island, I guess. Probably the first time in the whole of New England.

It all happened because of the ingenuity, persuasiveness and persistence of my friend, the sailor formerly know as the Email Dude. The Email Dude had had an RS Aero on order for a year. But he still hadn't had a chance to try one. So he persuaded our friendly local RS Aero dealer, Scott Hardy of the Boat Locker, to lend us his demo RS Aero. Not deterred that we were in the middle of the worst winter in living memory, and that all the lakes and most of the bays were frozen over, the Email Dude took the demo RS Aero to Newport... and the rest is history.

The Email Dude launching his RS Aero in Newport

I was still waiting for delivery of my RS Aero in April.

But it was on its way!

I was so excited I even blogged about the container ship it was on.

And obsessively followed the ship's track.

What can I say? It was a long winter. I even lost Tillerwoman in the snow one day.

Sorry about that dear.



May was a great month. A HUGE month.

On May 14, Scott delivered three RS Aeros to my house. The Aeros Have Landed!

Three shiny new RS Aeros

My two friends and I had a few chances to practice with our RS Aeros, including one memorable day when it was gusting 30 knots, and then at the end of May we raced in the First RS Aero Regatta in the USA East of the Continental Divide.

These two quotes from that post say it all.

"Saturday was a perfect day for racing on Lake Massapoag, sunny, 80 degrees, wind from the SW in the mid-teens gusting into the 20s. Champagne sailing conditions."

"I can't remember the last time I had so much fun at a regatta."

 Me in an RS Aero

June was a great sailing month too.

I mixed it up with some Laser sailing in Rhode Island and RS Aero sailing at the lake club in Massachusetts. This caused me to write a post pondering the benefits of sailing in two different classes A Tale of Two Boats.

Me in a Laser

I was also competing in the Wednesday night pursuit races in the club and wrote a post trying to explain why I was enjoying this experience so much - with the cheesy title The Pursuit of Happiness.



What can I say about July?

I sailed in one of the most amazing sailing venues on earth, a place long on my bucket list, in the first North American Championship for the coolest new singlehander on the planet.

What could be better than that?

The RS Aero North Americans at the Columbia River Gorge.

August was a quiet month for blogging in Lake Wobegon, apart from some more babbling about how awesome the RS Aero North Americans had been. I think I was still high. Sorry about that.



September was memorable for the 66th Annual Massapoag YC Regatta which is famous for having the largest ever fleet of RS Aeros to sail in a regatta east of the continental divide. One of my blogging friends described this post as, "Best race report which barely discussed sailing I've ever read."

Skippers' meeting at 66th annual MYC regatta

I've noticed I have developed a tendency to write very long posts about the first day of a regatta and then forget to write anything about the second day. Sorry about that.



October was memorable for the day when I (almost) won the 43 boat Archipelago Rally. Thankfully it was only a one day regatta so my readers weren't deprived of half the story.

For some reason this photo is in my post about the Archipelago Rally 

but now I don't recall actually seeing this boat in the race.

November was memorable for my return to Laser frostbite racing in Newport.

I wrote about it at the pithily titled Hubcap Diamond Star Halo 56th Sail.

Me sailing my Laser in Newport 

and actually doing well in one race

Bang a gong!

December was memorable for another awesome sailing vacation at Bitter End Yacht Club and actually doing well in another race with the Newport Laser Frostbite Fleet. I haven't written about either of them (much) yet. Sorry about that.

---

2015 was another funny old year.

I sailed small boats  - RS Aero, Laser or some variety of Hobie cat - on 66 days in the year, which is about average for recent years.

But I only wrote 128 blog posts which is way down from my usual output.

Sorry about that.

Maybe I should scrap this blog altogether and start writing a new one called Sorry About That?

Imagine 2016 - Happy New Year!

To borrow (and adapt) an idea that Captain JP borrowed from the Bursledon Blogger who borrowed it from Carol Ann Duffy...

What do you want to IMAGINE for 2016?

RS Aero News Roundup - December 2015

My friends and I have packed away our RS Aeros for the winter. Two of my friends are planning to enjoy some RS Aero sailing at Nonsuch Bay Resort in Antigua in a few weeks time,  and I have been racing my Laser with the fleet in Newport.

But there's plenty happening in other parts of RS Aero World.

1. The Extraordinary English
There's so much RS Aero sailing going on in England at this time of year that I can't keep up with all the news.

There's an RS Aero UK Winter Series with nine events in various locations from Cornwall to Yorkshire, including the UK Winter Championship at Oxford SC and one event at the last club I belonged to England before emigrating to the US, Rutland SC.

Somewhere in deepest England

There was an event at Lymington on the Sunday after Xmas where the trophy was awarded to the sailor or sailors with the best fancy dress...

English people dressed up in silly costumes

And on the same day, that energetic chappie, Peter Barton (far left below), the RS Aero international class manager, entered a multi-class pursuit race called Emsworth Slipper's Slipper Shiver (huh?) and won the day although I can't figure out what that weird trophy he is holding is. It's not a slipper.

The winners at Emsworth Slipper's Slipper Shiver

2. The Formidable French
When my sons were little whippersnappers we lived in England and often took the boys for camping holidays in the French region of Brittany. One of our favorite spots was Carnac on the south coast of Brittany. I was reminded of our happy summer holidays in Carnac when I saw this video of Gilles Peeters sailing his RS Aero downwind from Carnac, past La Trinite, then on to Arradon. Over two hours of downwind heaven, zig-zagging through the islands.


Wait. It gets even better. Rumor has it that the first RS Aero World Championship will probably be held in Carnac in 2017.

Sign me up!


3. The All-over-the-map Americans
Apparently close to 120 RS Aeros were delivered in North America this year. Reports of new RS Aero sightings keep popping up on the web all the time.

Here is Neil Ray sailing his RS Aero on a lake near Denver, Colorado

Rod Favela enjoying some sunny weather at Rush Creek YC near Dallas, Texas

And KO Sailing took some RS Aeros over to New Orleans to show them off at the North American Optimist Midwinters.

All over the map!

4. The Tempting Thais

I have another tempting place to put on my RS Aero bucket list after reading about the RS Aeros at the Royal Varuna YC in Thailand. Apparently a few RS Aero sailors (and some other boats) from RVYC took a sail this week to Sattahip, 21 miles away, to visit the the beautiful white sand beach at Had Nam Rong. After staying in the Navy Hotel overnight the group sailed back to the club the next day.

I know the Royal Varuna YC have run world championships for other classes before, including the Laser 4.7s one year.

Just saying.


5. The Babbling Baby
OK, this picture is just too cute not to include.

Jason came back to his boat after packing up and having a shower at the club to find his wife had found a new use for the Aero... Who would have thought it can substitute for a baby change table?