South Africa Report for the International Association
South Africa Branch
GP14 Class
International
Association
PO Box 1478
Sedgefield
6573
26
January 2006
To the GP14 International Association
News and developments from South Africa
Before I begin, I would like to thank Hugh Gill for managing to track me down and asking for a report from SA. I will be honoured to be your South African representative and gladly assist the International Association in any way I can. I think having international representation is an excellent idea especially if we can put our thoughts and ideas together to increase the awareness and participation in GP14 sailing worldwide.
I am not sure when last we had communication with the International Association, but my feeling is it may be as far back as the 2000 World Championships. Hosting the Worlds in SA was fantastic for us in that it increased the number of boats on the water leading up to the event. There was a huge revamp of old boats and it was amazing to see how many boats had been hidden away and neglected.
However, the two years after the Worlds was very quiet. This trend has happened to all the classes who have hosted a Worlds in SA, and some classes have even fallen away completely. Sadly, this happened to the Enterprise Class and you barely see any blue sails on the water. The reason for this is due to our small sailing community. Most of our good sailors class hope to get as much competition and experience as possible and when there is not much to aim for (like a Worlds) activity in a class drops off.
Fortunately, our lull in activity was not too bad and slowly but surely numbers are increasing. The most encouraging part is that numbers are increasing without a Worlds Championships as a carrot. For the last three years, our National Championships have attracted 20 boats and more. Our aim for the next two years is to try have a Nationals Champs with as many as 30 boats, and increase from there.
At our last Nationals and AGM it was decided that the best way of attracting new people to the class was to introduce new boats. Most of our boats are series ones, which are 20-30 years old. Unfortunately, these boats don’t have a good reputation and are considered to be tubs (especially with the Fireball and 505 sailors) – mainly due to the fact that they are very unpleasant to capsize! Our focus is to change this image!!
During 2005, we put a boat building project in place and sent Pat Mitchell to Alistar Duffin for two weeks to learn how to build a new boat. I would like to thank Alistar for all his help and guidance!!! He has been fantastic and without his input, we would never have launched a brand new boat in December. The boat was first sailed at our Eastern Cape Provincials, which sadly was very badly attended with only 8 boats. Unfortunately many of the local sailors were on holiday and we didn’t have many boats travelling from Johannesburg. Nevertheless, the new boat with the under-deck sheeting and rapid draining ability had people from all classes very interested.
Everybody loved the new improvements and the feel of the new boat, and all Pat Mitchell needs to do is spend some time improving his finishes. It was too be expected that the first boat was never going to be as good as your beautiful boats, but with time and practice Pat should improve.
At present, we are standing with our backs to the wall as we have used all our funds to build the first boat, and need the first boat to be sold before building another. As you can imagine, no one wants to buy the first boat. Hopefully the boat will perform well at our Nationals and attract a buyer. We have competition from two new locally built boats (called a Rebel and Active 15) that have recently been launched – how South African Sailing approved this with the state of SA sailing is another story! They are both two-man boats and we were hoping to get our selling price less than theirs. Wood, fittings and spars are extremely difficult to source and the majority needs to be imported. Our exchange rate doesn’t help matters and as a result the boat is more expensive than originally planned (pretty much on par with the Rebel and Active 15). We expect the boats to sell for R50 000 (4-5 thousand Pounds) complete (trailer, sails, fittings etc). The GP14 has so much more to offer and because its an international class and the fact that it’s a good family boat, we expect the boat to sell better than the others. Lets hold thumbs and hope we get a few boats sold in 2006.
As previously mentioned, we manage to get about 20 boats at our National Champs, which is the best attendance for all the two-man boats in South Africa. In fact, we must be the only class to get into the twenties. Our class is split up as follows; two clubs in Johannesburg (Pretoria Sailing Club and Benoni Sailing Club, and one club in the Eastern Cape (George Lakes Yacht Club). Each of these clubs have 10-15 boats, of which 5-8 sail on a regular basis. There are a few boats scattered around Cape Town (Western Cape) as well. As you can see, the boats are around (not necessarily all in good working order), but we have hassles getting people to travel! Firstly there is a lack of trailers and secondly our new sailors are not aware that travelling to other sailing venues is part of the experience. We are currently working on these problems.
This weekend is the Northvaal Provincials in Johannesburg. We should get 15 entries. I will not be there as its too far to travel for a weekend (1200km’s). Instead a few of us from George Lakes will be travelling to and sailing in a regatta in Cape Town (400km’s) to try promote the class there.
Our Nationals are going to be held from 18-21 March just outside Johannesburg on the Vaal Dam. We have joined a 505 provincials and a large keel boat regatta to try advertise the class. Hopefully the tight competition and new boats will attract some new sailors!
We are trying our best to get some representation at the Worlds. We would love to be there!! Unfortunately, we do not have any funds left in our association so we are currently searching for some sponsorship. Another problem we face is chartering boats. We have contacted Nigel and Richard and they are doing the best to assist us. We are currently looking into sending boats over, but we are concerned that most our boats will not be competitive enough. I will keep you posted with our progress.
I see I have written more than I intended – sorry if it was too long!! We have a few challenges here in SA, but the enthusiasm is there and we have a good committee to see our plans through. We are about to approach the SA Navy to use the GP14 as a training boat and we would be delighted to host another Worlds in the near future.
Hope you all have a good meeting.
Kindest regards
Anthony Parker
(Chairman)