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Far left: Lewis Barnes
Left: Molly Howell
Main pic: Emily Kent
place, Tom Sambrook, 4th, Galahad Wisbey 5th, Tom
Cave 7th and Toby Cave 10th and in the Men's fleet
Louis Morris was 4th Light and Lewis Barnes was 4th
Heavy. This goes to show these youngsters are able to
cut it with the very best. All of the above, plus Harriet
Ellis, who won the World Championship in 2011 at the
age of 18 but who could not make the Brest event, are
now right up there.
So why did the raceboard class spend so long in the
doldrums? The finger can be pointed directly at the
manufacturers whose lack of interest in the class could
be explained if not condoned, because the design had
reached a point not far short of peak efficiency. There
was no incentive to bring out newer models every year
to tempt the buyer with the latest go-faster gimmicks -
because there weren't any! The boards were lasting five
or ten years or more and yet still remained competitive -
not exactly a market for planned obsolescence.
Emphasis was all on the shorter - allegedly sexier - type
of board, around the 320 mark, despite their lack of
low-wind capability.
Into the bargain raceboards were more difficult to
manufacture because having produced the basic board
you then had to make a hole in the middle to
accommodate a daggerboard and because of their
overall length - 3.80 metres or so – they were more
awkward to transport and no doubt they took up far too
much space in dealers' shops.
In 2001 a conversation took place at the World Youth &
Masters' Championships at Ostia in Italy, when the
assembled raceboard fleet who were concerned about
the lack of availability of new boards questioned BIC's
Guy Chilvers about the possibility of a new raceboard.
(Some years before, BIC had produced the Bamba, one
of the forerunners of the modern raceboard). BIC's lack
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