Laser SB3 Worlds preview

Glenn Bourke, Nathan Outteridge, Tom Slingsby, Rodion Luka plus three British champions - who to choose?

One of the most significant regattas to be held in the UK this year is currently firing up in Torquay with the World Championship for the Laser SB3s, the 10th anniversary of the class’ launch. Yesterday and today the pre-Worlds are taking place with the Worlds proper running from Monday until Friday next week on Torbay.

Among the 119 boats taking part in the Worlds, with boats from 13 different nations, the majority obviously from the UK, but also from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

Two of the hottest prospects are from Australia in the form of three time Laser World Champion and ex-Volvo Ocean Race CEO Glenn Bourke, now holder of the cushiest job on the planet, running Bob Oatley’s Hamilton Island resort in the Whitsunday Islands. Then there is the Aussie equivalent of ‘Ben and Percy’ – double 49er World Champion and present Moth World Champion Nathan Outteridge and triple Laser World Champion Tom Slingsby, who are both sailing with Ian Brown, Slingsby set to arrive in the early hours of Monday morning straight from the RC44 Austria Cup.

Glenn Bourke claims not to have done much sailing over the last three years since moving back down under. However when he was living in the UK he won both the UK Nationals and Cowes Week twice and was generally considered the form sailor. Since then what little sailing he has done has been in the SB3, including recently the Aussie Nationals and the Audi-backed King of the Docks event down in Melbourne. However he remains enamoured with Laser’s keelboat: “I just think they are the perfect stepping stone between a dinghy and a yacht and I’m not ready to sail yachts,” he told thedailysail. “I loved dinghies when I sailed them and these things are just like a blown up dinghy.

“It is a great boat. It is good in light air, heavy air, upwind and downwind. It is just the perfect design. It doesn’t have any weird idiosyncrasies. If you sail it well, you can get it around the track really easily. I just think they are a special boat and I am committed to them. I have loved them ever since I stepped into them.”

On this occasion Bourke isn’t too happy with the amount of time he’s put in prior to the Worlds having jetted in to sail with Australia’s SB3 distributor, Rod Jones. However he is threatening to put the hours in for the next Worlds, that are to be held on his home turf of Hamilton Island in December 2012. “That will be a great change for the Europeans. The weather conditions in the middle of winter – they’ll be able to sail in a T-shirts for a week.”

The game has also moved on in his absence. “It is getting trickier and trickier - everyone is getting better at it. When I stepped out of it there were some tricks about rig tension and sheeting angles and how you like to sail it and maybe two or three boats were doing it, now 20-30 boats are doing it! The spreader angles are all different on the boats, so the rig set-up is really important, getting the luff matching the mainsail and it is all a compromise. And then there are obviously things with the keel – you’ve got to have that finished nicely.”

But the biggest change since his tenure is that the weight discrepancies between the boats - in particular between the first 60 or so boats built in the UK by the Whites and subsequent SB3es constructed by DK - has been evened out to 685kg with weight correctors. Bourke acknowledges that today speeds of the SB3s are much closer than they once were.

Nathan Outteridge says he was to have competed with Ian Brown at the SB3 Worlds on Lake Garda last year with Ian Brown, but this didn’t work out. However this time the Worlds shoehorned in nicely before Holland Regatta, which he and Slingsby will be heading to directly at the end of next week.

With Ian Brown they competed at Geelong Race Week and the Docklands regatta where Irish SB3 skipper Dave Cheyne came out to sail with them (they in turn are sailing Cheyne’s boat in Torquay). In Melbourne they won the Docklands regatta with first prize being the use of an Audi A1 for a year, which Outteridge’s parents are now motoring around in.

So how does he find the SB3? “They are quite good. They have the keelboat aspect to them upwind, when it is a slow tactical race, and then downwind in variable conditions you can choose whether to get them up and go planning or you keep soaking and when it is windy you are sending it downwind the whole time. So it is quite exciting for a sportsboat and I think for the price they are quite good to race.”

The Aussie supreme team of Outteridge and Slingsby sailed together previously at the Docklands Regatta in 2008 when the Laser guru was on mainsheet. “We spent about an hour and a half in the boat and that as it and since then he’s never sailed an SB3,” says Outteridge of that occasion. “He’ll be on a steep learning curve and he won’t arrive until about midnight on Sunday. He’ll do tactics and keep the front of the boat sorted and I’ll just try and make sure it is going fast upwind the whole time, because it’s so shifty here that you can’t do both. I’ll be looking forward to some of his help for sure. And Tom’s has some experience sailing Etchells with [John] Bertrand...”

A wildcard at the Worlds will be International 14 and 18ft skiff World Champion, Rob Greenhalgh, sailing Red, the SB3 owned by local businessman and Melges 32 campaigner, Joe Wood. Greenhalgh, who has returned to his Popeye physique in preparation for his third Volvo Ocean Race this time with Ian Walker’s Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing campaign, is helming with Shane Hughes and Hamble legend Jerry Eplett up front.

“I won the Nationals a long time ago, crewing and came third a long time ago,” said Greenhalgh, “but this was my first time helming one, because I’ve always ended up sailing with someone else. And it was Jerry’s first time on an SB3 today. We are just taking it easy. With the Volvo boat not launching until mid-June, we have time to fit this event it. There are a lot of boats and it is interesting.”

Other British campaigns looking good in the form guide are those of the past three World Champions – Geoff Carveth, who won in Ireland in 2008, Craig Burlton in Portugal in 2009 and Jerry Hill, the defending champion, from last year’s Worlds on Lake Garda.

Jerry Hill (left) rates Joe Llewellyn (sailing with Nigel Wakefield and Jerry Vigus), who races with him on Lake Garda last year and is now campaigning the boat that was once upon a time Glenn Bourke's. John Pollard was third at the Worlds last year and has the benefit of having the ‘English Riviera’ as his home waters – Torbay is a notoriously tricky venue, read Jim Saltonstall’s venue guide here.

Of the international entries, Hill also rates the ex-Team Russia Volvo Ocean Race campaign owner Oleg Zherebtsov, who has Athens 49er silver medallist, Ukrainian Rodion Luka, helming for him. Having finished eighth at the Worlds last year, they have done a lot of training in Torquay.

Also, consistently up there having finished second at the last three World Championships, is Race Ahead, the campaign of Roger Hudson, which gets under privileged young South African sailors out on the water (read more here). In Torquay they have Jim Asenaithi helming with the more familiar figures of Marlon Jones and Wamdisile Xayimpi up front.

Costing around £24,000 new, although secondhand boats start at around £7,000, the Laser SB3 continues to gain popularity across the world, with 600 now built, boats in 18-20 countries and particularly active fleets in the UK, Ireland, Italy and Portugal, with fleets picking up in Germany, Holland and Belgium and new fleets getting a foothold in Le Havre, France and Singapore. We will be watching this World Championship with interest.

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