Kipper Sailing

Sailing schools are commercial enterprises and margins are extremely tight, so they typically buy training boats that provide sufficient accommodation for the maximum of 5 students and one instructor at the lowest possible price. These are usually European (as opposed to British) built and on large production lines.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this. True the boats will fall to pieces in years rather than lasting decades in the way that hand-built, quality yachts do and that's fine if we can eventually come up with a solution to disposing of fibre-glass wrecks BUT WHY ARE THEY DESIGNED WITH THE SAILING QUALITIES OF A PLASTIC DUCK?

 I once had the displeasure of teaching on such a craft in very high winds. The boat was 37' overall and had somehow got itself a RCD Cat A Certification, which is the highest you can get and should mean that it could cross an ocean. The problem was that, even with 3 reefs in the main and a pocket handkerchief of headsail set, it became uncontrollable when the wind gusted over about 35kts. And I don't mean that it rounded up into the wind, which would at least be a fail safe. No, this mother's bows would blow off DOWNWIND and nothing you could do would convince it to do anything otherwise.

That's not all.......the detailed design of some of these boats tells you immediately that the designer has never, ever sailed a boat in anger. In fact I suspect that they're all caravanners.

Typical example. The fiddle round the chart-table (that's the little fence that stops things sliding off when the boat heels), is often so shallow and rounded, it won't even stop a single chart from sliding off when the boat heels more than 10 degrees. Let alone a plotter. And, because there's nowhere convenient to store books or dividers or pencils and a rubber, these all get left on the chart table and end up on the floor.

Of course these boats aren't really designed for sailing schools, they're designed to sell to people who know little about sailing and boats and who are easily seduced by acres of space below and shiny wood (which is actually MDF covered in a plastic veneer). They imagine themselves snugged up in a picturesque harbour, quaffing a bottle of Dom with a bird that looks like Claudia Schiffer and forget that they're going to have to sail home tomorrow into the teeth of a gale.