Tag: rs aero

RS Aero Training Felpham UK, October 2025

Published on by Klaus HarrisLeave a comment

The RS Aero Youth and Adult training season 2025/26 started last week, the first one was at Felpham SC on the UK south coast.

We ended up shore based both days because of the conditions for launching, but nevertheless, thanks to our two coaches Sammy Isaacs-Johnson and George Cousins, a great training group and super facilities, it was a brilliant weekend.

Training weekends like this remind me of the master classes I used to do many years ago when I was a classical musician (guitar), where ‘ah ha’ moments would have major shifts on my playing. I had a couple of those ‘ah has’ this weekend.

Loose kicker, open leech
A little kicker, lifted leech, no mast bend
More kicker, mast starting to bend, flatter sail, (more so higher up) leech opening again
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ILCA / Aero Racing Poole Yacht Club, Nov 2024

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Swanage’s racing has ended for 2024, and I’ve started sailing at Poole Yacht Club again now in Poole Harbour. PYC has an excellent Aero/ILCA fleet and race over the winter. The Saturday morning format is five short back-to-back races on a square outer loop course.

We had light winds and murky weather yesterday. After the race, I had a sail around Poole Harbour which was fun.

From David Ramsey’s video
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RS Aero Worlds 2024

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Links

There seems to be a rhythm to my sailing year and there is always one big event that focuses my training for the year. In 2024 it was the RS Aero world championships in August at Hayling Island, a five-day event.

I’d trained hard and was in pretty good shape going into the event, and went with the 7m rig which is my natural rig size. The wind turned out to be light for most of the days, so I could probably have stepped up to the 9m rig.

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Starcross Steamer Jan 2023

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Last Sunday saw the first race and first open event of 2023, the Starcross Steamer, a handicap pursuit race on the Exe estuary in the UK.

Pursuit races are a great fun race format. All boat classes have a handicap, the race has a fixed length (e.g. 150 mins), slower boats start first, faster boats later with the idea being everyone is trying to catch up to and overtake everyone else. After the fixed race time, the race is stopped, and positions are taken by the safety boats.

It was an early start to the day, and we were rewarded with some lovely views.

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RS Aero Europeans 2022

Published on by Klaus Harris1 Comment

I took part in the RS Aero Europeans this Summer, a five-day event held at the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy (WPNSA), the venue for sailing during the 2012 Olympics. This event was part of the epic RS Games.

I was training up to this one all year, and it was an amazing week with five days of fantastic racing. I learned so much, not just from the racing but from the chats off the water, and fellow sailors offering advice and tips.

There’s a good write-up in Yachts and Yachting and some footage on Youtube (RS Games days 12-16). Here are some of my pictures.

The 7s coming back on day four.

There’s something special about sailing in Weymouth and seeing those rings. The whole place had the most amazing atmosphere.

2012 Laser Radial Gold medalist Xu Lijia sailed an RS Aero 5 and gave a Q & A session one day on downwind sailing, you could hear a pin drop as she talked.

Days one to three, were pretty windy (F5-6). This was day two, racing started at 11am.