Reply To: Future of the OK Dinghy
I started in OK’s as a Junior, aged 14, back in 1978. At that time we had 10-12 OK’s in the club & the typical age of the sailors were late teens to early 20’s.
I think it was about 1984 I raced at the Junior Nationals at Burton S.C (we had a separate Junior championship in those days) Mike Edwards, Gavin Waldron & I were all there together but we’re struggling to remember which year! I’m the oldest of the 3 of us, by the way – but we’re all still here.
Most of the established helms seem to be well into their 30’s or older nowadays – I think this is something we’re seeing across many classes so I’m not sure the lack of Juniors is an OK-specific problem.
I think the RYA schemes for Juniors – which put so much emphasis on “recognized” classes, basically creates a pyramid towards the Olympic squad but doesn’t do a very good job of catching the hundreds of kids that fall out of the system every year. We need to be recruiting these kids at our local clubs and encouraging them to sail OK’s.
Will the OK ever be a natural choice for teenagers? I think Jake pretty much summed up the reasons why not but I’d challenge a couple of points…
Juniors are getting bigger. I dunno the average weight for 16 year old boys nowadays but 70-80kg (a good starting weight for a competitive OK helm) is probably within the range for a lot of kids nowadays.
Is the boat too technical? Get the selection of mast & sail correct, use widely available data to setup basic rake & positioning, then you’re basically left with a mainsheet, traveller & cunningham to think about. Oh yes, a tiller too. I keep forgetting the tiller.
What can we – the class – do to support juniors & build up club fleets? Because I think its here that we need to focus.
Could there or should there be a Junior Rep on the Committee?
Should we organize “have a go ” sessions at selected clubs where we bring our boats down for non-OK sailors (especially juniors) to try out? If it means coming to a club a day before an Open-meeting & donating my boat to the cause I’m happy to do this. If people are put off by the low boom, the “technical rig” or the small cockpit I guess the only remedy is to stick them in the boat for an hour & show them its easier than they thought.
How about running a Junior Championships at somewhere like South Staffs?
Again – a day before the open, we make sure every OK sailor lends his or her boat to a junior & we put 20 teenagers on the water? I’d be delighted to bring one of our Christchurch Topper or Laser helms & give them my boat to race.
Tony’s point about having rankings & 1-day events deserves some consideration.
If only 15 of us show up for a World Qualifer, do we really need the qualifier at all with 6 races over 2 days? Its a nice weekend away but we’re only engaging a small minority of the OK fleet. Where can we go & what can we do to get 30-40 boats on the water together?
Although an OK is very capable of doing well on handicap, its much better to have 3-4 boats of the same class on the water. We now have 3 OK’s at Christchurch and that might just be enough to tempt one or two other people into the boat. Critical mass is the key to building club fleets.
We’ve started the idea of supporting club races where OK’s are sailed down here on the South Coast. Last year we went to Calshot (Colin Page’s club) and had a good day. We need to raise our profile at clubs where just one or two OK’s are sailing.
To summarise (cos I’m rambling). There’s no magic fix for the OK. I’m sure we’ll survive but if we want to grow maybe we shouldn’t just be thinking about the boats or the venues for the Worlds. Tony, Richard, Russell & Jake made some excellent points & made me think about things a bit differently.
