gandalf il grigio

graham elliot

1 The title of the post suggests to the attentive reader that the BritPop is also a creature of yours, it's true.

The whole BritPOP! design and rigs were down to Brad. 50 Shades Of Grey may be a better title. By the way grey is an awful colour to see on the water, the only good thing about it is that the opposition sometimes cannot see you either.

2 which has been your support (Brad/Peter) in this project is what were the difficulties encountered.

When Brad first designed the prototype BritPOP! it underwent 14 hull changes before he knew he had something special. I sailed Vickies very fast orange Widget against Brad and could see very early on that the BritPOP! was quite a fast boat. I then asked Brad if he would build me one and he agreed, he built my grey one and Vickies orange one, that Peter won the Worlds with, side by side in his kitchen. We launched the boats at West Kirby for a UK ranking race and managed a 1,2,4 finish on the Saturday and a 1,2,5 finish on the Sunday in a nice top suit breeze.

No real problems were encountered as the boat was quite fast out of the box and was completely dry from day one.

3 what do you think is the current landscape in europe class IOM, is it better? What?

The main problem with the IOM class World wide is that the waiting time for all the decent designs is far too long, even the second hand market is poor. Racing in the UK is as fierce as ever, we get an entry of over 50 boats for our ranking races and probably any of the top 12 has a chance of winning a race. I think the World and European Championships are great races to enter but understand why more and more skippers are looking at other races to enter instead, the Maltese Nationals is becoming a very interesting race as are others. I feel skippers are being asked to pay far too big entry fees for the big championships, obviously a big expense is the judging.

4 What do you think of the upcoming World Championships to be held in Israel?

Isreal looks a great venue, i know Nir and his team have put a lot of work into getting the race on and am sure it will be a success. Unfortunately i was not in top 10 to get an invite from the Uk so have decided to make alternative arrangements, not happy about this.

5 excluding the project BritPop what you think is a very fast IOM boat to recommend.

There are plenty of other fast designs on the market beside from the BritPOP! The Fraktel, Cheinz, V8, MMX, are all very fast. The key to it all is knowing the weakness of the designs you are sailing against and exploiting them. There is only one weak spot in one certain wind strength for the BritPOP! and i have been sailing mine for 2 years now.

6 your future projects

Ironing out the one weekness in the next design.

7 you will be in Italy (Lake Garda) for the Italian championship class IOM

I hope to be at this race and am awaiting information, i think there may be a few UK entries, i know Ken Binks wants to come for sure. Can you reserve me 09 please?

8 What is the for you race with IOM class.

I have sailed just about every class over 30 years in vane and radio and find, at present the IOM class offers good sailing anywhere in the UK for any given weekend. We are lucky at Birkenhead because we have some top sailors, Roberts, Gibson, Walsh, Ballington, Potter, Tushingham etc, sometimes easier to get a medal in the World Championships than at a Birkenhead club race!

grazie , thanks.