News

August 22, 2006

On Friday, August 18 2006 the world’s largest local one-design fleet celebrated its 75th Anniversary at its home – Seaview, on the Isle of Wight. Exactly 175 of the locally built ‘Sea View One-Design’ (SVOD) dinghies hoisted their multi-coloured sails for a mass-start fleet race in the morning and an historic ‘sail past’ hundreds of spectators lining the Seaview Waterfront.

Class Captain William Edwards explained the unique characteristics of a class built by the same family and only raced in one village: ‘The boats are traditional wooden boats made of spruce and oak and elm. They are clinker-built which means that they are planks laid over the top of other planks on a frame. They have spruce masts which are 18ft tall, the boats are 12ft long, they are very difficult to sail because they are sharp in the bow and any chop, they take water over the leeward bow. We are very unusual and unique in the sailing world in that we have multi-coloured sails. All other classes have the same coloured sails – our sails are a complete myriad, eclectic mix, as diverse as the colours for jockeys. The whole point being that each family is identifiable by their unique
colouring on the sails.’

The 1931-dated fleet of Seaview One-designs’ now totals 198 boats which lie off Seaview on swing moorings during their summer season. Every evening in August about 50 SVODs enter the Evening Dinghy Race. Each SVOD
has a unique sail pattern made from different colours, making a spectacular sight when racing in the Eastern Solent. The fleet includes many Ex-Olympic sailors and, when their schedule allows, the odd America’s Cup sailor has been seen battling with the regulars – and quickly finding out how hard it is to win in this competitive fleet!

Trying out a Sea View Dinghy for the first time was singlehanded offshore race Nick Bubb. He was finding out how hard the boats are to sail well. ‘It was good, very tweaky, lots of little things to learn, a bit wetter than I expected, it took a while to find the self-bailer – it was amazing to race with 180-odd boats! The boats are just a tiny bit slower than what I’m used to which is my excuse for a bad start, as I ended up stuck in the middle of the line when I was trying to get down to the other end. It is really nice thought to have a slightly more tactical sailing which I haven’t done for a few years.’

The race was followed by a Sail Past the Lord Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight and the family of the class founders. In 1931 there were 6 dinghies in existence! In 1981 on the 50th anniversary there were 100 dinghies. Most of these were built by Bunny Warren with some early boats built by Feltham of Portsmouth and in later years 10 were built by Norman Newell. Dinghy no. 100 was built by Bunny and Michael Warren together to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the class in 1981. Since then Michael and his son Nick have built a further 98 dinghies still locally in the village, Michael Warren: ‘For me, the fleet race and the sail past is the highlight of my working life building the dinghies. I’ve built 98 boats myself which makes me two short of my goal for building 100 boats.’
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Harriet Priest