J-80 UK Class Association

The National Championships are going to be held in the Hamble under the burgee of the Royal Southern Yacht Club.  Again it will be a 3 day event from 12-14 June.  Hopefully we will be able to build on the success of the Nationals at Plymouth and have an even bigger fleet.

For those of us in the Solent there is the Royal Southern September Regatta on the weekend of the 20-21st.  This is the last of their Summer series, although one could say what summer, so get your entries in.  Entry forms are on the Southerns website, www.royal-southern.co.uk.

In the West Country there is an Open Meeting on the 4/5th October.

In the Autumn the Garmin Hamble Winter series runs from October to the end of November.  The Notice of Race and Entry form are on their web site at: www.garminhamblewinterseries.co.uk.

Tim Wright has taken photos of all the boats at Cowes Week, there should be some good ones considering the weather so take a look at www.photoaction.com.

2008 saw the first J/80 one design class in Cowes week, and what a great entry! 23 boats entered to provide very close and competitive racing.

Navigation, boat handling and tactics were all put to the test in a week that saw winds from 5 knots up to 32 knots!

In previous years the J/80’s had been confined to the Sportsboat class, where vagaries in design between different boats could determine the winner and loser. Now there was a level playing field!

The racing featured everything from close tactical racing up the island shore, to great downwind sleigh rides with boat speeds up to 16 knots.

The racing was very close, with the top 5 boats regularly finishing within boats lengths of each other after 2 hours racing.

J/80 regulars such as John Fowler on Jugular Vein, Rob Fox on Jevan, James Sullivan on Jin Palace all showed great pace at different times during the week. Arnaud Rousseeu and Victor Gibon from Le Havre in Brittany also brought a very competitive team across the channel to compete in their 2^nd Cowes week in a row. Adding to the mix were 2 chartered UKSA boats which were again very quick and certainly knew their way around the Solent.

New faces in the fleet were Redshift, Wild Wally, Just Smyle, Strumpet, J Caramba, and Blues in J, and all had their moment of glory.

However, the week was dominated by Savage Sailing with 6 straight wins, meaning that they could sit out the final 2 races.

Seb Ripard on Against Malaria.com came with members of his World Championship crew, and Marcus Stone and James Dyer on Rose & Thistle had some very good imported talent from Cardiff. These 2 boats pushed Savage Sailing hard throughout the week to gain 2^nd & 3^rd respectively, but ultimately there was a very clear winner.

Chris Savage, Liz Savage, Ben Walker and Richard Hughes have now been together for 4 years, and the team work certainly showed with great awareness of wind, navigation, boat speed and tactics.

Once the J/80 class was sewn up, attention then turned to whether these results would be good enough to win them white group overall.

The leading Squib sailor was the only person who could beat them, and did come very close, but ultimately the overall prize went to Savage Sailing.

Seb Ripard also won the Skandia Young Skippers trophy.

With the J/80 class on the increase throughout the country, and especially in the Solent, the numbers are expected to increase for Cowes 2009.

For more information on the J/80 sportsboat, please go to www.j-80.co.uk  

Robert

There has been a change in dates for next years world championships they will now be one week later; i.e. 4-11 July.  This has been due to lobbying by the French Association because the French student examinations would not have been finished by the original date.