These are the pages specifically designed for newcomers to the 505 fleet and for the people who may need a little help, such as one of our recent recruits, Ian Garrard, a 'non hotshot' based at Datchet.

Ian has a beautiful 30 year old boat that has been in the family since new.  In one of the earlier races of the Winter Warmer Series, his tiller broke and so, armed with new tubing and his handy pot riveter, he put it all together again for the last races of the series on Sunday 28th February.




With a forecast of 35kt winds, he set off to Datchet on his huge motor bike clutching his newly assembled tiller and stock.

Scott Wallis his crew travelled up form Southampton and, we believe, it was Scott who actually pointed out the mistake!!



A suggested caption put forward by Pete Mallaband

'Houston - we have a problem'

No prizes for the best caption, but if you want to send them in, please do so.  We may even publish the best!  Fishing, and crew recovery come to mind!

Thanks to Ian for sportingly taking the picture and sharing his senior moment with the rest of us.

Finessing the Pole [25-Jun-2010]

Iain Christie [8700] has written a very good article on his expoits with his twin pole system that should be useful to anyone who is thinking of moving to a two-pole system. You can view the document by clicking this link: http://www.gbr562.co.uk/505/e107_files/downloads/finessing_the_pole.doc Note that this is a document download so it will open in your MS Word. Tony

Basic Rig Set Up

OK so you’ve now bought or are thinking of buying a 505.   Unlike many of the newer classes a 20 year old boat can still be reasonably competitive and will probably still be pretty solid, and there are some 30 year old boats about that still sail fine.  Whilst the 505 is a ‘one design’ class there are a huge number of variations including centre boards, gybing and non gybing, monster kites and the trappings needed for that, struts and rams etc. I’ve tried to show the basic way of setting up your pride and joy so that you can enjoy the ride without fighting the boat.  I’ve also tried to provide links to useful bits of info that may be relevant to your boat that can take a little while to discover. Firstly you need to put together all the bits of string and check cleats ratchets etc are all working ok.  There is no ‘correct’ way to rig a 505.  Over the years habits change and therefore the set up of the boat will change. On some boats you may find the jib cleats set up for the crew to tack facing backwards, on newer ones it may be well be set for the crew tacking facing forwards.  Once you have found all the bits of rope, then the absolute first thing to do is to get a basic rig setting.  Whilst this seems like a bit of a faff, it not only helps you go faster but helps balance the boat and makes the whole thing easier to sail and more fun.  It really is worth getting this bit right, all the training and advice in the world will be completely in vain if you haven’t bothered to set up your rig properly. Rig Setup: The Pinnell and Bax website has a complete table of how to set up every bit of the boat for every type of weather, for the first few sails, however, keep it simple. For a basic set up you will need a long tape measure and ideally a rig tensioner guage.  Pull on some tension, normally by tightening either the shrouds or forestay or a combination of both.  If you can get a tension of around 400 lbs measured on the shroud wire, then that’s great, some older boats won’t take that much tension, in which case put on as much as you can without the boat folding in half but so you get a good ‘boing’ from the shrouds!! Use a tape measure attached to your main halyard and hoist it to the top of the mast.  Take the other end of the tape and take it to the point where the inside of back of the transom meets the hull. For light wind sailing, non trapezing, then the reading should be about 25ft 5in (7740mm).  If not, then release the tension, change the shroud pins or settings and try again.  Once you have that setting with reasonable tension, then mark it up on the boat so you can reset it in the future.  Newer boats have fully adjustable rigs and are much easier to change.  At this setting you will also want your jib fairleads at their innermost setting (450mm from centreline). Whilst playing with your tape and guage, you may as well also mark up for medium wind, crew trapezing and helm starting to play the main upwind (10-12kt) and also tonking (maybe not for the first time out) as raking the rig will really help you keep control of the boat in a blow.  Don’t be shy of raking, the boat really responds in a blow and with the rake properly set will still be a delight to sail. Medium setting – 10-12 kts of wind – let’s go sailing!  Rake about 25ft 3ins (~7700mm), just a couple of inches back but does the job, also open out the jib fairleads a little.  Again mark up this setting on the boat so you can quickly set the rig.  If when you are sailing in medium wind you still feel overpowered, then don’t be afraid to rake a bit more, between 10-12 kts and 14- 17 kts lies a difference of about 5 inches of rake.  The right setting for you is in there somewhere, the guys at the front get it right more than the guys at the back! However for the first few times out, follow the above and you’ll be fine. Tonking – crew fully out, helm fully out, and main out most of the time going to windward. The wind will be at least 14kts and above and the mast needs to be pulled back to about 24ft 10ins (7570mm) yep that’s a full 7 ins back from the lightwind setting, scary but true but really effective at calming it all down.  Again the jib fairleads need to be opened up and the boat will take off. Again mark off the setting so you can find it quickly. The above should hopefully be a good basis to work from.  Without doing the work above everything else is pretty much meaningless so spend time on this first and everything else will fall into place. I’ve taken the figures off the P&B tuning guide, once you have the basic set up then it is well worth checking out the full guide to discover where all the other bits of string on your boat should be set. But start with the above!!! Over the coming months I’ll try and put up some more tips or links to articles on everything from Gybing Centre Boards to tweekers!!

Heavy wind sailing tips

Mail to Adam Kenny after 4th Sunday at Datchet. Couple of bits I’d welcome your experience on regarding sailing conditions we had on Sunday.  Forecast 35kts – but probably more like 25 on the reservoir. I had the rig raked well back and the jib blocks thre quarters out and an inch down on the strut, which all seemed to work ok. (maybe more strut?) Plenty of Cunningham,  I also didn’t have too much kicker on to let leach exhaust with our light weight.  However where did you have your board going to windward?  I presume you have a high aspect gybing board, can you raise yours in high winds and still keep it straight down or what?  I can’t raise mine in the case however I could have tilted it, however I didn’t feel I was tripping over it. Also downwind I noticed you were full running rather than broad reaching, was that to get a breather?  We 2 sail reached and didn’t lose much ground to the 3 sail boats that stayed running (in fact by the time they had broached on gybes etc, we would have made the leeward mark comfortably before them and I was taking it really easy).  Wouldn’t a 3 sail wiring broad reach have been even faster? (perhaps with faster safer gybes) Quick comments would be useful, Mail back from Adam It sounds to me like you had the rake about right!  However we used only a little cunningham, just to take the creases out of the front of the main.  I'm not a big fan of cunningham, always makes the main look rubbish! We were using quite a bit of kicker, but as you say we were a bit heavier than you guys. The 5oh takes a hell of a lot of kicker so don't be afraid to wack a load on. Upwind we tend to keep the board down until it gets really windy and we start to trip over it.  Thats with a gybing board though. With the old style boards i'd raise it a bit earlier. Haha, unfortunately Neil works me too hard to have time for a breather! Of course 3 sailed reaches are quicker but with so much traffic about (FFs) we were taking it a little easy.  What we were tending to do was round onto a run, then look behind us to find the gusts and head up or stay low depending on where the most wind was, if that makes sense. This is a top tip inland. I hope this helps, give me a shout if you have any other queries! Post script after Day 1 at Pitsford:  Wind about 12-15 kts with gust coming through at abot 20kts, I had the rig set for medium wind (probably about 10-12kts) thinking it would keep power us up in lulls.  Ian Pinnell who was OOD for the day kindly came up afterwards and suggested that we should have had far more rake and that, compared to all the other boats, our rig was quite upright – we were about 3 stone lighter than any other boat!!..  Whilst we had gone fairly nicely I thought we had quite a lot of rake, clearly in anything like a blow – more rake is definitely good.

Gybing Technique – from Jason Lunn

Anyway, this is how we gybe, remember though that the HELM & CREW activities happen at the same time: HELM - bears off slightly CREW - looses some power in the kite and comes into the boat HELM - uncleates jib from leeward side and cleats in slightly on windward side CREW - takes down pole and places on leeward side, then pulls on twinner from current leeward side HELM - controls both spinny guy and sheet, steers into gybe, controlling direction of boat and keeping spinny full CREW - helps boom over the boat at exactly the right moment then stabilises the boat HELM - stabiles boat and maintains downwind course CREW - attaches new guy to pole and launches, (while at the same time if possible) releasing the twinner on the new leeward side CREW - quickly gathers slack from spinny sheet and as tension forms go straight onto the wire while (if windy enough) HELM - is sheeting in main in to balance the crew and steering a slightly into the wind slightly for speed BOTH - Enjoy the ride!!! If its really blowing, big waves or an emergency then we do gybe without taking the pole down, as this is safer but its always a mess to sort out.  In my opinion the boat needs to be tidy otherwise you will easily make mistakes like twinners around the boom!! For good examples of Downwind technique and also the above gybing technique, cheque out the Video of Sym GP 2008.  Nothing hairy but some nice examples of where to sit (look how far forwards helm and crew get, and a nice gybe at about 2 minutes 20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psupMO9WkRs Ed - Just a footnote to this - how the crew and helm interact and the tasks they perform does depend on where the control lines are in the boat.  In 8860 the twinners are on the aft part of the c/b case and so the crew cannot pull them on so it's the helms job!  So use the above as a guide and, if in doubt, ask someone.