Have just watched the final day from the Gladstone Worlds. Brilliantly exciting viewing and the organisation and presentation was simply awesome.

A huge well done to Datchet Members – Nigel, David and Sean. Really terrific and enjoyed watching you all compete. Thank you.

To the guys at the top – what a close finish!! So exciting to watch ! One point !!

For the Bar Chat ….adding fuel to the fire:-

I was intrigued at the number of each design that was entered in the regatta. The VickersRC boats seem hugely popular in Australia and New Zealand and rightly so. The Britpop of ANZ perhaps! Along with the Venti the Vickers boats had around 20 qualifiers a piece. From the Northern Hemisphere, the very new VISS design had 7 entries. Simply fewer VISS’s there as it’s a pretty new product, from a land far away.

The designs all look to perform about the same to me. Do they to you`? Do you suppose designers have converged on the optimum shape by now? Let’s face it, just like at any Club the thing that counts most is “who is driving”, and there were some amazing sailors at Gladstone.

When you were watching boat on boat situations, did you visually get an impression of what the quick designs were? The camerawork tended to follow Ian Vickers a lot with his V12, and my gosh his boat looked quick to me. Fabulous.

But Formula One has a Constructors Championship which often leads to interesting differences when viewed alongside the Drivers Championship. I wondered if there was a way to compare design success alongside skipper success.

So I tried looking at the performance of the top four boats of each design… and then the top five boats. This is what I found !!

Next time we are in the clubhouse queueing for coffees, we can talk about this !!