Tag Archives: One metre

IOM Sunday – What a Breeze! (Storm Eowyn!!)

We had a good fleet of IOMs on Sunday. We had nine put their names down in WhatsApp, and possibly eight or seven in attendance. And Boy… did it blow!! We went out on B Rigs and later moved to C Rigs.

The club was bustling with an inter-university team race championship so there were firefly dinghies zooming all over the place. At 11am the proper gusts (40-50mph) were meant to arrive. I happened to be standing on the end of the pontoon when the first squall arrived – practically blew me off my feet. The Club lifejacket rule makes sense!

As the students came in, so do did our B rigged fleet. We all huddled in the clubhouse, then suddenly Craig, Nigel and Dorian fancied a C rig outing and off they went. Immense fun to watch.

Sunday 12th – No Breeze but a Compelling Day at The Club….!!

The Clubhouse was very busy owing to a large number of eager Optimist Sailors being held ashore on their training event!! Galley revenues were up!!

It was a misty 1 gusting 2mph kind of day… cold too.

Five of us at the club today. Buddies are forgiven for staying under the duvet – it was minus one…. We’re having a bit of a run with adverse weather, but unexpectedly it turned into an extremely interesting day.

You may have read a week or so ago about Craig’s new IOM designs named Proteus and Nimbus sweeping the podium at the Hampton Court on January 5th. (Nigel won it). They brought two of the design iterations of Proteus for us to see – both Proteus, but several slight differences between the two. They are 3D printed in four sections and immensely strong. I won’t put up all the photos here for the sake of Craig’s confidentiality, but you’ll be interested to see the long distance shots.

The blue boat (54) is Nigel, currently out of camera shot.

Note that as is the 2024/2025 trend, the booms positively hug the deck for improved aero-dynamics. You won’t be able to see it, but they are actually each printed using different material…. part of the experiments. There are also some tests on these of different thickness to establish whether thicker means stiffer, faster etc.

Spot the difference!! There are some 🙂

An unexpectedly captivating day!!

New IOM Availability at near DF95 Price – Is that Unachievable??

Dinghy sailing clubs have been having a tougher time of it as the decades go by… One often quoted issue being the proliferation of the number of dinghy classes and destroying class racing. I have some sympathy with that and it has been the same in small keelboat classes too. A difficult situation.

I’ve not been trying radio sailing for very long, but it had occurred to me that there may be similar issues in radio sailing. Plus supply of new products can be very challenging for newcomers to deal with and…. enter the fabulous DF95 phenomenon.

I’ve been wondering quietly for some time if 3D printing and all that could get us to a position where you can quickly get availability of an IOM at a cost not wildly different to DF95.

It turns out that much greater minds than mine have been wondering about the same thing. Did you see this article on MYA today??