What is a Racing Oppie?

Racing Oppies are lighter and faster and more manouverable than the heavy duty plastic training hulls at Bardowie or Largs. The racing boats are generally made of light weight fibreglass, though wooden boats are still competitive in the junior fleets. A minimum weight Oppie in racing trim will weigh just over 35 kg, about the same as an average 11 year old.
Although a One Design dinghy, the racing Oppie can accommodate several sail cuts and spar dimensions. This allows heavy/light, tall/small children to sail competitively in varying wind strengths, on large ponds or oceans.
(The 1992 UK National Champion was the 15 year old Ben Ainslie, subsequent double Olympic gold medallist, and he won the event at 5 ft 10 in and weighing 9 stone - so the Oppie isn't just for small peeps! Mind you Ben A is rather a nifty sailor…)

The Oppie provides the keenest junior racing of any sailing dinghy. The Oppie fleet is the biggest and fastest growing and most international of any sailing dinghy. It is raced at every level from club to mammoth international events. The 2005 UK National Championships, at Pwllheli in North Wales, attracted 330 competitors (including 18 from Scotland), thought to be the largest single class event ever held in the UK.
The defining feature of the Oppie is that it is easy to sail badly (therefore the ideal learner boat for children) but very tricky, unforgiving and technically demanding to sail really well in all weather conditions. At one end of the scale, more children have learnt to sail in Oppies than in any other dinghy; at the other, 60% of sailing medallists at the Athens Olympics were ex-Oppie sailors. It is a unique boat!

It is also an ideal learner boat due to it's sprit rig: learners can continue to sail (and learn) in winds that will send the Topper sailors ashore. The boost to their self-confidence when that happens has to be seen to be believed! And don't trust anybody that tells you you cannot learn in a racing Oppie. I know at least three boys who had (admittedly old and cheap) racing Oppies as their first boat. They learnt to sail, and moved all the way through regatta fleet and into main fleet before they needed to change boat! As a bonus, they learnt how to take care of the boat from day 1 - all part of good seamanship.

The ranking system, explained

GBR Optimist sailors are eligible for three ranking events per season - the Inlands (ideally six races over a weekend on a big English pond, mid May); the End of Seasons (same format, different English pond, mid October); and the National Champs (ideally 9 races over the first week in August - always sailed on the sea, traditionally rotating through Weymouth, Pwllheli in North Wales, and Largs. There are generally about 300 Oppies on the water at these events.
As well as the main fleet of more experienced sailors there is a coached regatta fleet at all the ranking events. This is ideal for our younger, newer sailors - less pressure, no rankings at stake, and more fun!
At the end of the season the cumulative points are added up and a final ranking position per sailor is determined. The top 30 form the GBR National Squad, and the next 30 the GBR Intermediate Squad. The there is the Development Squad - organised by IOCA, no (official) RYA support, so no Red Jackets. Unofficially classified as a 'super zone squad', the next 15 [older] sailors get invited in - but no Welsh. Apparently the Welsh are too well organised. The 07/08 squad does have a token Scot... Squad sizes are determined at IOCA AGMs - there are an additional 4 discretionary places available for each squad. Both squads train over the winter (almost always in England) then compete against each other at the World and European Selection trials over two weekends around Easter. From that rarefied competition emerge a top 5 sailors who go to the Oppie Worlds, then the next 6 who go to the Europeans (officially, the European team consists of 7 team members with 3 from each gender group and the next from the rankings), then another 10 or so who go to the French Nationals. We're talking here top, top end only.
Sailors who fail to make the grade are put into industrial presses and re-cycled as plastic bags.
Apart from the fat ones who become Topper sailors. Only joking!!
Fortunately, as well as the supersonic national squads, we have wonderful touchy-feely regional RYA and IOCA supported squads where our sailors train like mad over the winter and catch up with the Red Jacket brigade next time around!
It all sounds like manoeuvrings from a small planet orbiting Betelgeuse.
And in fact it is exactly that. Funnily enough though, the deeper that you find yourself being sucked into the full horror of Welsh cuisine and Weymouth car parks, the more normal it all becomes. Time for that aspirin, Nurse!

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