Gurnard sailors try the new RS100
On Thursday the 8th October 3 of Gurnards, shall we say, more mature sailors were invited by Nick Peters of RS Sailboats to try out a boat that they have been developing labelled as a "performance singlehanded asymmetric hiking dinghy"
The trial was to take place at Hayling Island sailing Club and the three sailors, Phil Wright, Steve Kimpton and Chris Gillies travelled to Hayling in Phils R.I.B.
So what is an RS100? As mentioned before it is indeed a "singlehanded asymmetric hiking dinghy" and if you were to compile a tick list the boat would indeed tick all the boxes being clearly aimed at the performance end of the market with an Epoxy foam sandwich hull, moulded in wings, carbon mast, carbon boom, carbon spinnaker pole, a 12sq metre radial cut asymmetric spinnaker, a choice of (approx) 8.5 and 10.2 sq mtr clear mylar film mainsail and a swinging centreboard and rudder (great for Gurnard!).
One design brief was to make a boat that would enable sailors of between 70 and 95 kg's to be competitive at top level, hence the 2 sail sizes.
So what's the boat like to sail? surprisingly easy! but given that we had only 12-15 knots of breeze and very flat inland water to sail on perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise. Upwind felt very balanced with little hiking effort required, at least with the smaller sail, the bigger sail did need more weight over the side, at least for Chris who at 75kg's sits right in the middle of the weight range, Steve didn't try the larger sailed boat.
It was difficult to assess the upwind speed as no other boats were on the water to compare, Nick told us they were using a modern Phantom for comparative trials and the 100 can now match that boat on the beat in light weather and faster in more breeze.
Once the kite was deployed the boat became much more interesting although again very manageable in the 12kts of breeze, even Steve, a spinnaker virgin, had no problems, well no problems until he came to drop it and realised he didn't know which ropes to pull! Once again it was difficult to get any impression of how fast the boat was given the complete absence of other boats, surprising really given that it was an absolutely gorgeous day, but it was a Thursday and I guess some people were working! Again we have to refer to Nick for comparisons and he told us that they are matching the 29er for downwind speed, if that's true then that is impressive indeed.
The two boats we sailed were and have been for the last 3-4months the prototypes and have been cut, stuck and pasted in all areas so did look a bit secondhand and some things did need a final sort. The hull and deck shape on boat 2 is now complete and will be as the production boat, the rigs on both will be finalised within the next six weeks by which time production hulls will be in from Thailand, the production site.
RS intend to make two "production" boats available at Oxford, or somewhere central, for all prospective buyers and other interested parties to try over a 2 week period in November. Phil Wright is in direct contact with Nick at RS and anybody who has an interest in trying this boat should contact him.
A perfect Gurnard boat then? well maybe, we'll have to wait and see, but for first impressions, well we were impressed.
This video on youtube shows Chris sailing the 100 down wind.......badly! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi3fWkfjONA
Chris Gillies 14-10-09
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