Gill Solo class Inland Championship at Grafham Water Sailing Club - Preview
by Will Loy 4 Sep 17:15 BST
7-8 September 2024
Northampton at it's best for day 2 - Superspars Solo Inland Championship 2023 at Northampton © Will Loy
I turned to my long suffering wife, flicking a few strands of hair away from her ear, "it's the Gill Solo Inlands next week" I whispered, "a two day Championship on some lovely flat water and...". I imagine many couples up and down the country were lying in bed having similar conversations, it has, after all, been little more than a week since the conclusion of a very successful Allen National Championship and Nation's Cup, won by Dutchman Pim van Vugt and we are already cashing in chips with the house.
That said, the UK Solo fleet knew that this season was going to be pretty intense towards the latter stages, venue choices and subsequent clashes and re-scheduling have, like a tractor on a B road, compressed the calendar and with the Nigel Pusinelli Trophy, Welsh Championship and End of Season still to come, more awkward bed talks will be necessary.
On the upside, there is no better practice for a major event than a major event and the NSCA have done it the right way around and, following an extremely challenging Championship on the Sea, an event on the flat water of Grafham should be a doddle.
Grafham Water Sailing Club has a strong home fleet and with a reduced club member entry, they have NO excuse to not to be on the start line on Saturday (Sep 7th), the club have arranged a class dinner too with several culinary choices, something I always factor-in when choosing to cover an event or not. Whether the catering team will be able to match the delights of the Raj Massala in Brightlingsea is another matter but a tip would be to keep serving the sailors beer.
It is difficult to provide you with a guide to who will win as the entry list is currently as thin as a strand of dyneema though the quality is undisputed. Clearly, if Tom Gillard turns up then everyone should be worried as he has won the last two Inland Championships and may be seeking retribution after finishing fifth at the very windy Nationals. But of those actually entered as of 2pm Tuesday, Mike Barnes, racing his 35+ year old Beckett is in with a chance or it may be a first female winner if Maria E Franco continues on her upward trend. Chris Bunn, Nigel Davies and Steve Ede may also feature but my bet, though some may say it's a long shot and others may say "who" is Tony Thresher.
The innovative Solo builder, who for decades constructed hulls of various shapes, some more successful than others, and used well-ahead of its time methods is competing in a major for the first time in many years.
Tony's first Solo, 3420 was built in the early 80's and coincided with the curtain dropping on Richard Lovett builds which were the 'prestige' category of Solo construction. While the Lovett was indeed beautiful and fast, the market for fast hulls was full of eager young guns like myself. Budget limitations and no secondhand Lovett hulls available provided a rich vein of interest in an economy model, all hulls were painted in baby blue and the craftsmanship of the joinery was dictated by the quality of grain and finish to epoxy fillets.
That said, when Tony got a shape right (and he tweaked his frames to suit the helm weight) the results could be devastatingly quick. Where now the FRP construction line produces hulls which are identical in looks and speed, back then, rocker depth, aft section stiffness and bow entry could produce speed differences that were visibly quicker to the naked eye, albeit in the hands of sailors like Geoff Carveth (Lovett 3286) and Simon Cray (Utterly 3406).
Malcolm Gandy is not a name many will recognise but he raced one of the fastest Threshers on the East Coast, well, downwind anyway. I am still unsure as to what made it so quick and I doubt Tony or Malcolm knew either, maybe it was luck or maybe the jig moved a little bit after he finished it and the measurements were lost forever.
Of course, there are always eggs broken when you make an omelette and there were some casualties of his experimental construction techniques. Jon Clarke, a long time fan of the Thresher hull purchased one with white wood inlays, something earlier Threshers were devoid of, their inclusion being cosmetic and therefore useless but, a Solo that looks pretty is always a lure and the white trim on the Lovett's had proved it. I might add that Vic Crawshaw would later go on to produce many Solos with stunning inlays, testament to his skill and patience.
Anyway, Jon is in contention for the win and tacks for the top mark, his balletic backward style normally as graceful as the flight of a Butterfly but on this occasion it all went wrong, capsizing and losing him the win. Once on the shore he explained that the experience was like he was being held by an invisible hand, unable to detach his skinny behind from the deck before realising that the inlay had popped away from it's recess and pierced his wetsuit.
Tony had a plan and he just about cracked it with 3604, owned from new by Peter Brook, the lighter Gaboon decks contrasting starkly with the Snapdragon yellow hull and black spars. The bow profile was one of the best he had fashioned, his words not mine and I had to have it. I did indeed have some great results over two seasons, it's only drawback was that I kept kicking the sidetanks in, they were on the thin side!
Of course all builders strive for the perfect shape and Tony was no stranger to pushing tolerances, tilting the bulkhead forward to allow more mast rake was genius and way before it's time while reversing the rudder profile so the back edge became the leading edge did not quite catch on. I believe Tony also developed the double floor, making the hull much stiffer and concentrating the weight down low. His greatest contribution was the development of the female mould allowing the hull to be constructed the right way up and incorporated epoxy fillets throughout the build.
The Solo hull shape is governed by tolerances with +- allowed for builder error, remember the Solo was designed for home builders so +- 5mm provided plenty of scope for legitimate mistakes but also wiggle room for the more technically minded.
Richard Lovett himself built a number of hulls which were later given RYA dispensation, one example even had convex bottom panels. I once owned the Alec Stone built Solo 1102 'Minstrel' and having measured it myself, can tell you that Alec had built the centreboard case as far back as possible, nothing to do with builder error, bringing the centre of resistance back balanced the helm upwind.
So pushing the envelope was/is a natural evolution where the rules allow some latitude, the tricky thing with the Solo though is that if you make one change it has an impact somewhere else and later Thresher developments seemed to stall rather than improve on the 3600-3800 design.
Tony did develop an FRP shell based on one of his fast shapes and this was available for the home builder to deck or he could do it for you, 4515 was one such Solo and came with Teak gunwales and thwart, all aimed at weight placement but the Winder production line was, by the early 2000s, in full swing. Tony continued to build and developed a White Whale all wood Solo for Mike Hobin in 2008 and this proved as competitive as the FRP examples but by then, Winder and Speed were grabbing the market and had plenty of decent jockeys racing them.
I have gone on one massive tangent but to go back to my initial statement, Tony Thresher, racing the white whale will be going for it at Grafham if his body lets him so show the man some respect, his dedication, ingenuity and sometimes Heath Robinson craftsmanship went along way to the development of the modern Solo you race today.
Grafham Water is a great venue for racing with it's circular shape and quite uninterrupted topography, it does get choppy but not Brightlingsea choppy so I should get some good photos and video.
We will once again be using WhatsApp to keep those at home invested in their loved-ones progress over the weekend, they can always leave the group if too disappointed to watch any more.
The coverage is as close to live as possible, governed by how quickly I can record and send to the group and will also include competitor info, last minute changes of SI's and my smooth commentary which, while not AC Cup standard, is at least full of drama, wit and laced with irony.
The club has set a deadline of midnight Wednesday to enter though we hope to extend this so next time you have a bedtime chat with your partner, mention where you are going this weekend.
Enter at www.grafham.org/open-meetings-entry.html
You can take a look at some of the builds I have mentioned, in the Concours video...