Sailing 4

These three Striders are all boats we had ourselves. This one we built in 1987 and was the first Strider with a big rig and wider overall beam. We won both the UK and European National Championships in 1987, as well as several other events. When we sold it the new owner said it made a good fishing platform - not bad for an ex racing boat!

We built Woods Express in 1998 as an experiment in lightweight building. Expecting it to last one season, it is still sailing 12 years later. There was only 60kgs of glass used in the whole boat. Two people could lift a hull. All up racing weight, including safety gear etc was 580kgs (a Firebird weighs around 720kgs a Dragonfly 1100kgs). It was extremely quick in light winds, in fact we beat all Firebirds and Dragonflies in its first race. Un fortunately Richard then fell off the boat while moving it in the marina nd severly gashed his leg and we weren't able to race it properly again. (The following year we sailed the Strider Clubs to the USSR)

Our third Strider, Striderman, was built in 1992. We bought two secondhand hulls and fitted a new rig. A new racing class "F1" for smaller micromultihulls was being promoted and we drew a rig to suit the class. Richard raced it with several different crews and won the F1 championships and finished 3rd in the National Championships that year (Rodney Pattisson, triple Olympic medallist came 4th in a F24. Striderman beat the F24 over the line in every race except one.) Although the boat used standard grp hulls, by paying careful attention to weight throughout the fit out, Striderman was 150kgs lighter than the next lightest Strider. We used the motto "if in doubt leave it out", hence no windows, a wire mainsheet horse, no outboard, etc etc. It resulted in a successful, cheap project and gave us a lot of fun that year.