February News
Hello all 2000 sailors,
Now that we have survived the extravagances and onslaught of Christmas and New Year, it’s back to the water with Spring just around the corner. Some of you might already know that I have been out of action recently following some routine minor surgery. However, I have been signed off (written off?) now so watch out Shustoke, I’ll be coming back!
Together with the New Year, we have a….
NEW CLASS NAME
We have a new class name, simply “2000”, following the recent change in boat builder from Laser Performance to LDC Sailing, hence the new logo above.
NEW BOAT BUILDER
The name change follows a decision by the 2000 designer, Phil Morrison, to grant the manufacturing licence to LDC Sailing, famed for their “RS” range of sailing dinghies. The 2000 Class Association is fully behind the new arrangement and will oversee the transition to ensure that the 2000 class remains the one design that it was always intended to be.
LDC are very enthusiastic about becoming the new builder of the successful 2000 dinghy – for further information follow the links:
http://www.2000class.org/content_topic.asp?c=association&GET_ID=3000 and
http://www.2000class.org/content_topic.asp?c=association&GET_ID=3001 .
It is anticipated that availability of new boats and spares will become very much easier in the future than has been the case over the last few years.
SPRING SERIES
The new race series for Spring starts Saturday 2 March. Let’s start to get our 2000s out of hibernation ready for the new season.
WARM-UP AT WHITEFRIARS
This is an established event in the Class calendar for 2000 regulars and takes place this year Saturday 27 April/Sunday 28 April. It promises to form the perfect way to get back up to speed for the new season. Based on coaching to hone skills (or remember lost ones) on the Saturday, a three race practice schedule takes place on the Sunday. Others will be there from around the country and this would be a good opportunity to travel there together for an “away day” sailing experience.
Whitefriars SC is just 85 miles from Shustoke towards Swindon, around an hour and three quarters away. The training session is free to Class Association members (or you can join on the day for £15) and there is a race entry fee of £12 for the Sunday races. For those that have not done so before, it’s good to sail on a different stretch of water with other 2000s and a larger class fleet, so have a think about it and let me know if you’re interested. See the poster with this letter or on the notice board.
If there is sufficient interest in the event, for those that have not trailed their boats before or are a bit rusty, I’ll organise a short workshop session at the club in the dinghy club on how to prepare the boat for the road.
NAMING OF PARTS
Just in case you have forgotten the name of that all-important thingummyjig that you needed before you stopped sailing last year, I thought the parts list diagram would be handy to get prepared before going sailing again and finding that vital piece is still missing or broken. Thanks to Dave Griffiths for this idea.
Note that the part numbers are Laser’s own part numbers and will probably not correspond with the part manufacturers’ own references. Spares for the 2000 are stocked by Sail Laser, Purple Marine and Sailboats.co.uk and soon will be stocked by LDC Sailing.
2000s FORM INTEGRAL PART OF TRAINING
In more ways than one, actually. While the three club 2000s have been busy with all the training over the last half of last year, they have been out for the two winter Saturday morning sessions as well. Not only that but several “core” members of our fleet have been participating in training themselves – RYA Dinghy Instructor, RYA Powerboat training and RYA Safety Boat training. Then, of course, John Wilkin is heavily involved in the Club’s training behind the scenes in his Training Principal role. He is away taking a well-earned break at present but we hope to see him back sailing with us again soon. Also, Steve Moore has volunteered (press-ganged) to assist with maintaining the club’s training 2000s.
WILKIN TROPHY IS PRESENTED
Tony is presented with the Wilkin Trophy by Commodore David Dale
It was back in November that Tony Lloyd was awarded the 2000 Fleet’s Wilkin Trophy at the Club’s prize giving evening. Tony, and his able crew Peter MacDonald, eventually took the honours in a tightly fought battle of points in a series that was fraught by low water and weed. Congratulations to Tony and Peter.
TECH TIP – JIB HALYARD
One of the items that is prone to wear is the jib halyard. The continual flexing of the wire rope results in fatigue and the individual wire strands begin to break at the talurit splice at the head of the jib where the end of the wire is crimped back on itself to form a loop to attach the top swivel. Replacement halyards are cheap and easy to find (I had to change mine before last year’s Nationals) but I found they come without the little white plastic wheel which is supposed to help prevent tangling of the luff/halyard wire with the forestay or gennaker halyard when furling the jib.
Puzzled how this fitted to the wire, we eventually worked out how to separate the two plastic pieces so that it can be fitted to the new wire. Basically, the two parts dove-tail together but preventing them from simply sliding apart are two inter-locking wedge-shaped teeth in the lateral areas. You can see these features in the close-up photo below, left.
These have to be prised apart, as you can see in the photo above, right, before the two parts will easily slide apart. Insert two flat-bladed screwdrivers where shown to disengage the teeth and then pull the two halves apart with pliers, as shown.
Reassembly on the new wire is easy with no tools required. Thanks to Geoff Johns for this insight into how it is done.
Well, hopefully there’s some food for thought. See you and your 2000s out soon.
Happy sailing!
Lawrence
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