Chapter 5

Off course to the Paralympics

It had been a team effort to quickly design and build a boat to be selected as the equipment to be used in a new Paralympic discipline. The role Julian Bethwaite played was to provide high performance technical know-how, the lines drawing, a basic sail plan and the extended 29er mast and boom. Ideally he’d be there in Singapore at the selection trials and there see for the first time what we had created. The Australian Government played a role as our project was supported by AusIndustry, which provides some funding for research and development projects, and Frank Hammond of Horizon Sailmakers designed the sail plan.

I had modified the original lines drawing by extending its length, given the SKUD its distinctive stern, the stem its flair, while the deck as per our other boats was about ergonomics so there was no formal plan.  We added the cowling that covered the foredeck, which also supported the elevated mast step, and added the 100mm “bowsprit” as my intuition was that we needed to extend the J measurement to remove weather helm.

The J measurement again is the horizontal distance from the forestay where it attaches at the deck (or the stem or bowsprit) back to the front of the mast. It determines the size of the fore triangle, the area of the jib. The jib can’t overlap the mast if it is to be self-tacking, which it must do if the sheet might need to be controlled with a winch, so the way to get extra area forward of the mast is out the front on a bowsprit. The hull still had potential to be longer and still fit in a 20 foot container, so we extended the planks at the stern about 200mm which, after trimming, left the finished hull 5900mm long.

When you steer a sailboat with a short joystick the centre of area of the sail area when projected down to the waterline needs to be close to the centre  of lateral resistance of the hull and its keel. The C of LR is the point at which the hull will move sideways and not turn when it’s pushed from the side.

You can imagine that position, pushing the boat sideways, if you push forward of that neutral position the boat will turn bow down. Move aft, past the C of LR and the bow will turn up, stern down.

It’s necessary for several reasons to have slight “weather helm”, ie for the boat to want to turn into the wind if the rudder is removed or left unattended. So with this light weather helm the rudder needs to be on a slight angle to the water flow to steer a straight line, that’s with the sails trimmed for optimum performance. The angle the rudder is off streaming with the water flow determines the weight you need to pull on the tiller to sail a straight line. So if you only have a short joystick to steer by, this weight, your weather helm, needs to be minimal, and close to neutral, which means close to perfect balance.

With perfect balance though, it’s hard to steer as the boat will constantly wander up and down a few degrees. So you need that tension with the sails trying to turn up into the wind and the helm pushing the bow down. Then the boat finds its groove and steers itself to windward with maximum efficiency.

When in that groove you lock in the rudder angle, so if you ease the mainsheet even 10mm the jib will cause the bow to turn slightly downwind and the boat will balance on a new course. So by adding a short bowsprit

the jib sail area is further forward and more effective at removing weight on the steering, plus a bigger jib helps it to fill and adopt its aerofoil shape in very light wind.

This balance between the centre of sail area and hull sideways resistance is greatly effected of course by the position of the centreboard, which becomes the keel on a keelboat with its ballast contained in or attached as a torpedo like bulb on the bottom. So you can’t just shift the keel back and forth much  to achieve this lateral balance as you are moving the ballast, which has its optimal position to trim the hull for sailing performance.

Hull trim is also effected by the position of the crew, particularly if they are disabled and strapped into a fixed or canting seat. Plus you don’t want to position a seat above the keel as it needs to be raised and lowered, so there are many factors which need to be juggled to achieve the right balance, considering hull trim, sail trim and ergonomics to arrive at optimum performance.

You don’t arrive at that perfection at the design stage so you need to build into a prototype the option to move things around. So called “gut feelings” will suggest where to start, so it helps to have a knowing that the boat is going to work. So where does each element need to be to realise the concept? If it’s going to work then the various elements will have their obvious position. We knew this before we started the design process, which allowed me to specify the key dimensions around which to draw the lines and sail plan.

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Having said all that about balance and actual force needed on the tiller or joystick to steer a straight line, we can micro manage this load by changing the balance of the actual rudder blades in relation to the axis on which the rudder turns. With a short joystick you need to start off with a very high aspect rudder blade which can be turned with the minimum of effort. If you angle the rudder blade forward in its casing so it projects in front of the rudder’s turning axis you dramatically reduce the force needed on the joystick. But if you go too far you lose all control of the rudder as it prefers to turn sideways instead of trailing behind the rudder pin’s axis.

The 2.3, 303 and Liberty rudder blades have their leading edges parallel to and just behind the rudder stock pin, but they are extremely high aspect, meaning very deep in relation to their width, which makes them easy to turn with the shortest joystick. The bigger the boat becomes the bigger the loads, but the joystick can only be so long, so the SKUD has moderate aspect rudder blades but with induced balance with a small percentage of the rudder area projecting forward of the projected axis line of the rudder pin.

So here we have artificially reduced the force needed on the joystick, while using moderate aspect ratio blades which give optimum performance on a boat which drives at high speed under an asymmetric spinnaker. The spinnaker however projects that extra sail area out the front and totally distorts that nice lateral balance we had between the fore and aft sails and the hull.

That’s where you need that induced balance as when a gust hits on a reach the boat heels and will try to round up so you need to exert some force to drive back on course, or down a few degrees further which will give an exhilarating blast of speed. Conversely, if you don’t manage to “bare away” and the boat rounds up into the wind you will get knocked down on your side, your sails flat on the water.

In a way induced balance is cheating the hull lateral residence/sail area relationship but it is very effective. So it is possible to slightly tweak the area of rudder blade projecting forward of the pin axis, which allows an extremely disabled helmsperson to control a SKUD at high speed downwind even at high angles of heel, where conventional sailboats generate excessive weather helm load leading to a round up and broach.

A broach is when the boat rounds up into the wind and on its way is knocked flat on its side. You can do that with the SKUD, even with an extremely disabled sailor with minimal strength, either by accident or deliberately for training, and then you can turn those powerful rudders and the boat will right itself and turn back on course downwind, without ever leaving your seat. That’s what makes the SKUD such a good boat: it’s safe and controllable when spinnakers have other boats out of control.

Nick Scandone, who won the gold medal in Qingdao, had ALS disease, a very degenerative muscle dystrophy, with very little power left in his arms.  But thanks to induced balance of the SKUD rudder blades he could still steer the boat manually. Maybe if it had been big winds in Qingdao the results would have been tighter, but Nick didn’t need to sail on the last day as he already had the gold medal won, so he was by far the best sailor. Nick died 3 months after winning that gold in Qingdao, which is a testimony to how good a sailor he was, but also how good a boat is the SKUD.

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Above I didn’t mention having 2 outward canting rudders and their role in maintaining control and steering a straight line at 45 plus degrees heel, or skating downwind staying in control in front of a squall. When a wide stern hull like the SKUD heels excessively its windward blade is up in the air well clear of the water, but its leeward blade is digging deep and on an efficient angle. Whereas a single centreline rudder would be angled over with the hull, half tending to steer a course left or right, half lifting the stern up or down.

But on the SKUD the rudders are not on the centreline, so the hull changes its angle of attack, sailing along a line from the bow to leeward rudder blade. So the 45 degree angled hull adopts a long narrow shape, almost symmetrical at the new water line. This is another factor in designing to avoid excessive weather helm when heeled.

A displacement hull is a form which pushes up a bow wave in front of it, and pulls a wave up astern as it moves forward, the more power applied the deeper the hole in the water it digs around itself. A planning hull rides up onto its bow wave to skid along the surface on a plane.

Whereas the SKUD is a planning hull when sailing downwind at low angles of heel, when it’s heeled over going to windward it behaves like a displacement hull.  As described above, when heeled it’s wide stern’d wedge shape sees it sailing along one side of the wedge, with its efficient leeward rudder maintaining control, while the other half of the wedge shaped hull and its rudder is up in the air and clear of the water.

When the conventional small displacement hull heels its hull adopts a very asymmetrical shape, around which the water must flow to its central rudder trailing on the back. This ugly shape throws that nice sail area/hull lateral resistance balance overboard and you need a very long tiller to crank the rudder over to maintain a course, which is like applying a brake, or you have to ease the mainsheet, or reef the mainsail so the jib can push the bow down to stay on course.

So there are long thin deep displacement hulls with central rudders, and wide stern planing hulls with two rudders. Both work for different reasons, but in between is an innovation employed on our little boats like the Liberty. They look like conventional displacement hulls, but have a concave bottom which takes away that under-hull volume which otherwise would cause the asymmetric distortion.

So instead when the Liberty heels to extremes it adopts a shape like the 45 degree heeled SKUD, long thin and symmetrical with its leeward rudder steering a straight line with little weather helm.

What would be perfect is a keel that can turn through 10 degrees, so when the hull is sailing along its heeled waterline, the fin-like keel can be turned to better present its leading edge to the water flow to give better lift to windward. This is what you would do if it didn’t have a torpedo of lead on the bottom – which would create an engineering nightmare on an otherwise uncomplicated sailboat.

But that is what happens, actually taken a step further, on big keelboats with canting keels, as here the keel’s main purpose is righting moment and not directional stability and resistance to leeway. On canting keel sailboats there are asymmetric leeboards each side just forward of the mast and these will be placed and angled to present the foil to the heeled angle of attack and water flow for maximum lift.

Maybe the biggest and best example of this is Comanche, the 100ft Super Maxi designed by French naval architects VPLP Design and Guillaume Verdier. France are the world leaders in boats like this, which have evolved for short handed ocean racing events like the Vende Globe.

IMOCA is the International Monohull Open Classes Association which was founded in 1991 with the main task of organising regattas and singlehanded circumnavigation events like Vende Globe, Barcelona World Race, and Ocean Masters World Championship. IMOCA developed the Class Rules for the IMOCA 50 and IMOCA 60. These are Open Development classes, meaning they are the leaders in innovation, with IMOCA 60 racing singlehanded around the world, on foils.

Comanche is based on this French expertise, but scaled up to a full crew ocean racing super maxi. The first owner of Comanche is quoted as saying that the designers told him that if Comanche didn’t have the worst rating for any sailboat, then they had failed in their mission. That’s because this design is about speed, not speed compromised by a rating formulae, as ratings  tend to penalise those things that make a boat fast. So Comanche, like Vende Globe racers, are only interested in the line-honours victory, not a handicap win.

The bigger the boat the more its costs go up on an exponential curve, so you don’t see actual new ideas on boats like Comanche. The experimentation is on the smaller IMOCA classes, which are still big 60 footers. So it’s not surprising that the French have also developed the Mini Transat Class 6.50, or Classe Mini 6.50. These little boats race solo across the Atlantic. There are 2 divisions, the more conservative production boats and prototypes where you are free to push the boundaries, as long as its 6.5m max long and is self righting.

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Our SKUD is inspired by this French yacht design leadership so it’s not surprising that the SKUD looks to me like a miniature Comanche. France is not only the leader in shorthanded round the world racing monohulls, they are also the leaders in offshore multihulls, both cats and tris, but particularly trimarans, and the French population must be the most aware and knowledgeable of sailing, in the world. And you can trace a lot of that back to the exploits of two men, Bernard Moitessier and Eric Tabarly.

Bernard Moitessier was one of the earliest global solo sailing adventurers, who set sail from Indonesia in 1952 across the Indian Ocean in a dilapidated Junk heading for France. He was shipwrecked half way and wound up in Mauritius where he worked and built another boat to continue the voyage, but was wrecked again in the Caribbean, so he hitched a ride on a ship across the Atlantic to France.

In France he worked, married, in 1960 published his first book, “Sailing to the Reefs”, then with the proceeds built the steel Joshua, named after Joshua Slocum who was the first person to solo circumnavigate the globe. In 1963 he and Madam Moitessier embarked on a circumnavigation of the globe which changed to a circumnavigation of South America around Cape Horn returning to France in 1966.

Then in 1968 he joined the first around the world solo yacht race organised by the Sunday Times which included Francis Chichester, Chay Blyth and Robert Knox Johnston. But after rounding Cape Horn on the final leg instead of heading north he crossed the Atlantic, around South Africa, crossed the southern ocean, passed south of Australia and back to Tahiti, in protest at the commercialisation of global solo sailing. He sent a message to the London Times by firing a message by slingshot onto the deck of a passing ship as to why he pulled out stating “because I am happy at sea and perhaps to save my soul”.

His book “The long way” tells the story of his voyage as a spiritual journey as much as a sailing adventure and is still regarded as a classic of sailing and adventuring literature. (Wikipedia). His autobiography and other books followed. His boat Joshua now lives on in the maritime museum in La Rochelle, while visitors to his grave in Bono in Brittany (he died in 1994) leave thematic gifts such as slingshots creating some elements of a shrine. (Wikipedia again).

My other French hero, and I’m sure France agrees, is Eric Tabarly who created a range of ocean racing boats of outrageous innovation, from Pen Duick ll, (Pen Duick is a bird, a Jenny Wren), which began life as a ketch when it won the 1964 singlehanded transatlantic, became a schooner, then again a ketch, followed by Pen Duick lll, also a schooner, which became a ketch, then came Pen Duick lV, a trimaran, then PD V, a water-ballasted 35 footer which won the Transpacific Solo with 10 days to spare to the 2nd placed competitor. PD Vl is a 76ft monohull ketch with spent uranium ballast in the keel. From PD lll on these were unpainted marine aluminium and usually won their division in crewed ocean races, as well as all the single-handed races he entered, with the hull re-rigged to suit the expected conditions, or a change in rating rules.

Bernard Moitessier would have inspired Eric Tabarly who inspired the French imagination and spawned an industry, and today France is on its own, way ahead of the rest of the sailing world. Apart from being the leaders in multi hulls, and transatlantic, and round the world single and short handers, the FFV, the French Sailing Federation, is the best organised on the planet, and all French school kids learn to sail. You only need to open a French sailing magazine to see the technical detail, graphs and charts of performance data that the French readers understand and expect.

In 2001 Jackie and I were staying with our first French distributor who lived near Geneva and we drove down to a lake near Lyon for the inaugural committee meeting of La Voile Ensemble, which has grown into 50 plus clubs across France and is the French Hansa Class Association. We left our car and trailer in the carpark of the local sailing club and walked the 100m up a path to the local community meeting rooms. It was early afternoon and midweek so it was all quiet at the club, but when we returned about 6pm there was a crowd around the trailer. About 20 sailing club members were discussing its features, it had 2 rudders, it featured bold unconventional curves, it had a pink deck, they had worked out it could be reefed.

That there is the difference. In France the Liberty and its innovation is appreciated and understood for what it is, whereas if you parked that trailer in the carpark of a club in an English speaking country it would barely earn a glance, probably be ignored, or be the target of derogatory comments.

Those French guys were working people, representative of the local community where everyone knew something about sailing, everyone owned a sailing spray jacket to stay dry in the rain. Sailing is a part of being French.

I think that awareness has been built on the exploits of those solo sailors who captured the French imagination, and it continues today with France ruling the waves in shorthanded ocean racing, which will be a pillar of French national pride today, and I’m one who cheers them on. But I don’t speak French so am only an observer, and it’s probably this divide between French and English speaking worlds that allowed the commercial Hansa program in France to run off the rails, twice, over the next ten years, but we will come to that later.

It’s worth noting that our boats were originally inspired by French flair and design in general. In the early 1990’s when I was learning how to use polyester resin there was a little Renault I saw which folded in its rear wheels as it backed into the kerb to park, leaving the car’s overall length the same as the width of a conventional vehicle.

At the same time the Japanese carmaker Mazda produced the Mazda 121 with its outrageous curves. Then I was struck by French leadership in moving to compound curves in fibreglass boat building to take advantage of its engineering qualities, instead of building fibreglass boats with wooden boat characteristics. It was this chain that led me to shaping the 2.3 hull, then the even bolder and more compound curves of its deck.

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It was due to French awareness and love of sailing generally, and in particular their appreciation of our Liberty, with its curves and two rudders, that we had high expectations for our boats in France.  We got off to a good start with Pierre. We purchased a Peugeot Boxer Van which Jackie and I used to travel through France for the 2001 ISAF annual conference held in Lisbon, and while in Portugal travelled its length seeding several programs from Porto in the North to Vilamoura in the South. Then we lent the van to  the fledgling La Voile Ensemble, which was to serve as the umbrella for the Hansa programs in France, which as said above grew into our Hansa Class Association.

So we began well, but eventually Pierre needed to move on, so a new distributor was found, a family affair which we liked. They were boat builders, so could better cover all sides of a successful distribution business. It went well for a few years, but like many good things it wore itself out, and ended in a disaster which reverberated for years. On planet Earth agro, chaos and confusion are never far away and seem an essential counter to peace and harmony. You don’t have a boxing match if there’s only one fighter in the ring.

That brings us back to the SKUD and the Paralympics, where we had been allocated 12 slots which needed to be filled, or those medals would be taken by the other classes and we wouldn’t get them back. The teams qualified for Paralympics selection according to where they finished in 2 qualifying  events, the first in Rochester in NY State in September 2007, the second would be in Singapore soon after. Most of the powerhouse teams had already qualified in Rochester so Singapore was strategically important as it allowed poorly resourced teams to qualify at a local event at minimal cost. Rochester was huge, with 17 boats on the starting line, as it was billed as the main event, being the first Worlds for the new SKUD 18 class. The first 6 nations in Rochester would qualify, then the first 5 in Singapore, plus China, as the hosts who automatically qualify – would fill the 12 available slots

One thing was to qualify, but does your MNA and National Paralympic Committee agree to send you? Although NZ qualified in Singapore, the NZ MNA wouldn’t endorse it as they didn’t see a chance of winning a medal in Qingdao, which to us is very short sighted. It’s a lot of work and expense for a small business like ours to produce, promote and maintain a Paralympic Class so it’s sad when there is a chorus not helping, some working against you.

We had shipped 2 SKUD from Singapore to Whitby in Ontario, on Lake Ontario, to sail in our first Hansa Combined Classes Worlds, which we had timed to mesh with the IFDS Worlds in Rochester. Rochester is across the other side of Lake Ontario in the USA and was the first qualifier for the SKUD for Qingdao. These 2 boats went back to Singapore, then over to Batam so we could load SKUD 020 to go to France for the re-evaluation and endorsement event for the 2012 and 2016 single person and 3 person disciplines as the 1P 2.4m and the 3P Sonar were under review.

We had converted a SKUD to a 3P with a 60kg bulb instead of the standard 140kg, and removed the front crew seat, which opened up the cockpit, and added a trapeze for one of the crew. In the container to France were also 2 Liberty which we had jazzed up with the same 60kg bulb as used on the 3P SKUD, a battened mainsail, finer rudder blades, and one had a built in spinnaker chute and carried an asymmetric spinnaker.

That event was in April 2008 so there was still time for a French entry for the Paralympics in September, but we needed quick and dedicated action to pull this off. The 3P SKUD was an attempt to replace the Sonar, the Liberty X and XS were to replace the 2.4. We were never going to pull all of this off as we weren’t going to be given that sort of influence, particularly when we aren’t insiders in sailing’s mainstream political world.

All these container movements and developments cost a lot of money and, although we failed on all fronts to achieve our goals, they do show our commitment to experimentation and development. We were still only 11 nations for Qingdao so we had to make the effort to bring France on board. After all, here was the nation which inspired the SKUD, the innovative wide stern’d twin rudder mini rocket ship in the mould of the short handed ocean racers France was famous for. Surely of all nations they would embrace the SKUD. As it turned out we didn’t have a chance as all this time our French distributor was more interested in promoting their own boat, so were not even putting the SKUD and the Liberty forward. But we will get to that later.

You might ask why we had to go through all these mind games to get to the outcome, how come there is always a difference of opinion pulling things in an opposing direction. Well as these examples come up I keep pointing out that’s it’s the way things work in this binary bubble where mind pushes and pulls things in inconceivable directions.

For every force there is an equal and opposite force, like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, but that’s all on one plane when at times it feels more like a ball, a swarm, a porcupine, or a sea urchin with each spike representing a tug or push in that direction. So if you wonder why the world is the way it is – it’s quite a mess and seems to be getting worse – take on board the premise that it’s a binary bubble. Newton says, “for every force there will be an equal opposing force”. For every effort you make in a certain direction there will be some force working against you.

Now that’s a good question to toss out into the ether and see what sort of answer comes back.

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It should be obvious that life here is not meant to be easy. Conflict and confusion are not by chance. They are there to cause chaos through which we need to navigate to grow, so we have to be vigilant and constantly tapping things back towards the vision. Not that the original vision is perfect, but if you follow the process and don’t allow mind too much control the outcome will turn out much more elegant than originally imagined. That’s if you’re lucky.

Not that there is ever really a state called luck, and the so called lucky person would be much better off in the long run if they gave the spoils of their good fortune away.

So instead of saying “that’s if your lucky” it might be more truthful to say, “that’s if you deserved it”, or “that’s if you’ve earned the right to it”. If you haven’t then find a nice way to use your good luck to help others. Then you’ll earn the right for more. If that looks like a paradox that’s because it is. The more you win the more you should give away. But if you can get to where you don’t want anything, you can then have it all. These are very simple concepts based on the grand paradox: that truth and reality is undefinable, and everything that can be defined and proved only exists in the binary bubble of mind, matter and time, so is therefore only temporary and destined to end.

Which presents the fundamental question: is something that exists in time which will inevitably come to its end, more an expression of the truth than  that which always existed, that had no start so can never stop, like life itself? You can kill an animal for food, but all you have really done is cause such trauma to its fleshy body that its life force abandons ship, so its body ceased functioning as a being, leaving you with the lifeless carcass to eat. So there’s the question, we know all about the physiology of the carcass, but where did its life go? If it exists in another dimension, how do we define where lies the truth? Is truth as we see it in this world of matter mind and time, or is truth to be found at the source, beyond time in the oneness?

Or can we have 2 levels of truth? One for things going on in time in the binary bubble, a common world view which can be reasoned and analysed by mind, and the other for the oneness, for non-things beyond description, beyond comprehension by mind. It must be lived, and can only be consciously experienced when awake and aware, as a spark of life itself.

But what we have here are two very conflicting understandings of what truth means. Living in the binary world we are told we need security and health, we need to look and feel good. It’s about serving the desires of our senses and the pursuit of wealth and happiness. But the rules from the oneness tell us the opposite: let those things go, you can have all that as long as you

don’t want it.

Right there is the paradox behind all the world’s confusion. You actually don’t need anything, and should care more about the welfare of others. That suggests to me that if you can have it all and more by giving it away to those who have less, then that’s the way to go.

One way will take you down a path that will come to an end, a dead end. The other will lead you beyond the bubble and its start stop of time. It’s a concept tied up in the trinity of past, present and future, but it requires an attitude shift too simple for mind to manage.

Mind doesn’t know how to comprehend the meaning of 3, the trinity, even though a religion like Christianity claims a version as its guiding principle. Which, incidentally, is a subject for chapter 7 about  the evolution of religions.

But for now, briefly, here is a teaser. Past and future equate to stop and start, the past has stopped and the future yet to start. In between is the present which is an ever-moving Now. Past is also negative, future is positive, so the present Now is neutral. Past and future denote time, whereas Now, if you accept that consciousness lives on after death of the body, that it never had  a start or will have a stop, then living constantly in the Now equates to being alive and aware in the Oneness. As is said often – heaven is here now.

So past and future denote time, and along with positive and negative are attributes of mind and matter which belong in the binary bubble, while awareness in the present neutral Now is being alive and aware in the eternal Oneness. That’s the difference between time and eternity, how one evolves from the other numbers 1, 2 & 3, which is a source of the power of numbers.

If that’s true then we do have a hierarchy of truth. It’s found in eternity, which is an aspect of Oneness, while the bubble is in time and will come to an end, so it’s version of truth may have the feel of bricks and mortar, but it’s really an illusion.

In a binary world things are the result of cause and effect, while in Oneness they just are. Which hints at how 2 or more differing concepts can be true at the same time, when to our eye they are obviously quite different.

You might say that’s all in my imagination, but then what’s imagination? Isn’t it consciousness expressing its existence, gazing around in the ether? Where then is the ether? Well, it’s nowhere, because “where” denotes a place in space, which by any definition must be within the binary bubble, so the ether in this story is at home in the nowhere of the Oneness.

If you’re still with me we can follow a related tangent and ask what imagination has got to do with the process of creation. When consciousness visualises something it’s like an image projected out there in the ether, it can fade away or, if you pursue it with passion and love, it will start to take form. The materials and people who will fashion its bits and pieces into shapes take over, adding their style, as they are consciousness too, until the vision takes form far better than was first imagined, so it seems to manifests itself.

Or you can be dull and pragmatic and claim it was all the work of your genius self, but then you miss the magic of it all.

That’s the sort of nonsense (which is quite a good word for this topic about non-sensical non things) which would mull around in my consciousness  while trying to make headway in our campaign to have the Liberty selected as the third discipline in the Paralympics.

You might well say if that nonsense occupied your mind then no wonder you failed, being off with the pixies like that when dealing with those solid, well-grounded sailing administrators. Maybe we should have engaged more with the system. Well actually we tried to, and anyway, they didn’t know that secretly, inwardly, I was an alien  looney.

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We had been very much involved in the politics to introduce that new  discipline in the Paralympics. It goes all the way back to 1997 when Amy Barnbrook won her silver medal in our first event with a division for severely disabled sailors using our early servo assist control system. While Kay Cottee was presenting her medal I said to Barny, Ame’s Dad, “We need to get the rules changed so electric-powered winches can be used in the Paralympics. Then they need to use a boat that Amy can sail, so we are going to have to build that boat”.

Our first go at this was the 303 Single with high, wide, angled up side decks, a narrow cockpit so there was little lateral room for the crew to move, and 2 rudders for directional stability. We built quite a few, they work best with a standard 303 manual tacking jib as the original self tacking jib on the 303 is a little small to draw well in really light wind. In 2022 we solved that problem with a square top jib with vertical battens, which will also roller reef. It’s such an elegant solution it’s amazing that it took 20 years to evolve.

The first 303S was launched in 1999 and we presented it at the 2000 Paralympic Science Sailing Conference in Sydney run between the Olympic and Paralympic programs.

It was a significant milestone in the development of the UD concept, but that inefficient self-tacking jib was the big negative statement and demanded a solution.

So I extended the 303 hull out to 3.6m, exaggerated its concave bottom to give more form stability, removed the 2 skegs to reduce drag, made a new keel, fashioned a new deck much along the lines of the 303S and experimented with the rig to see how much sail area it would carry. By January 2004 we had 25 Liberty on the starting line of the IFDS Single Person Non Technical World Championships at Blairgowrie, to give the event its full title.

Some of those boats were sold so we built our mobile fleet back to 18 and shipped them to Subaudia in Italy for the 2005 IFDS Single Person Non Technical Worlds. The next stop for the fleet would be in Malaysia for the 9th Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled (FESPIC) which was the

IPC’s multi-sport games for that region, held in November 2006, which was FESPIC’s last rendition, being replaced by the Asian Para Games, which are in alignment with the mainstream Asian Games.

Looking at the name – “Far East” shows how euro centric was the then global powerbrokers world view. The English white man’s world view as they are words in the English language. From a Black and other non-European perspective, the “Middle East” is actually South West Asia.

***

It seemed to us an obvious lost opportunity for FESPIC not to include sailing, so Jackie made some enquires and found FESPIC, the organisation, was headquartered in Japan, where we were building a strong presence, and yes the organisation was not against sailing, and yes if 6 member states, including the hosts Malaysia wanted sailing it would be welcome. We could count on Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Philippines. We would need to do some work in Malaysia, and one more shouldn’t be too hard to conjure.

The then President of Sailability NSW Neil Anderson’s brother Ian lived and worked in Kuala Lumpur so could he find a venue and start Sailability Malaysia, and if so we could arrange some boats. “Yes,” said Ian, “we can do this.” So we built 2 x 2.3 and a 303 and a trailer and loaded them into a 20ft container, along with a tow-bar kit to fit Ian’s Toyota Tarago.

A minor issue was that trailers and tow bars weren’t used in Malaysia. Not that trailers were specially illegal, they just weren’t in the system, so when the container arrived Ian, who had prepared his van for the trailer electrics, drilled a few holes, bolted on the tow bar, hitched up the trailer and drove off down the road.

There were several organisations around Kuala Lumpur that worked with disabled people, there were suitable lakes to use, ex alluvial tin mines, so Sailability Malaysia was soon born. Next came a meeting with Kommander Karramudin which brought the Malaysian Navy on board, and soon after Malaysia was signed up as the 6th FESPIC participating sailing nation.

China were to host the 2008 Paralympic Sailing competition so they were keen to participate, and through Frankie at Singapore Sports Council for Disabled we soon had Cambodia and India as well, so we had 9 nations. The boats to be used were the Liberty and the 2.3. Frankie would truck in a fleet of 2.3 from Singapore while we would send our fleet of 18 Liberty, which had recently returned from Italy.

This was essentially a Paralympic regional event, so when the FESPIC Organising Committee announced that sailing would be one of the medal events it went up the pyramid to the IPC, who advised that as this would be under their jurisdiction it would be managed by the IFDS, using the IFDS classification system. We were aware it would go this way so had been sailing below everyone’s radar, because if this had gone through the normal top down

channels we were concerned that the 2.4mR would have been named as one of the classes to be sailed instead of our 2.3.

To us this was a development event for Asia and we wanted to demonstrate that the 2.3 was the perfect little boat to spread sailing in developing nations. Jackie had pulled off a lot of great stunts over the years, already she had seen Sailability programs initiated in over 30 countries, but this had to be her finest achievement so far. But, as we will see, there was still a lot more to come.

FESPIC was a great event for us as it was the first time we would see our little boats taken seriously by the organised sailing nations. AUS, NZL, JPN, SIN, CHN, MAL and PHL all sent a team of sailors and coaches. It’s the first time our boats saw coach boats on the course flying their country code flags. We had measurers and classifiers, race officers, jurors and once again Pauline Harrison was with us, this time as the IFDS Technical Delegate. It was our biggest show so far, but Jackie couldn’t be there to see what she had created as Malaysia is tropical hot, too hot for people with MS. Luckily less than 5 people per 100K have MS in tropical countries, while it’s more like 30 per 100K in colder climates.

In those days I was still terrified of public speaking, but it was inevitable, I never had a choice and knew it, so I prepared my speech well, which is always a necessity as there is nothing worse than standing before an expectant crowd of dignitaries, your mouth is bone dry and you’re  speechless. I turned up at the formal launch of the FESPIC sailing program straight from the pontoons and was told to go and  get changed into some appropriate clothes to suit the formal occasion, and given a list of acknowledgements I had to make.

They were all Malaysian honorific Muslim names with titles. We had a Governor, politicians, royalty, an admiral, senior public servants, and all the sailing officials. I stepped up to  the lectern, took a deep breath, smiled and began by reading from the top of the list of names. I was feeling pretty good and relaxed as after all this was really Jackie’s and my show as far as we were concerned, even if the assembled dignitaries didn’t know it.

When your centre stage like that, about to give a speech to a crowd of important and powerful people, at a major milestone in the journey something strange can happen. It’s like a figurative out of the body experience, your body and terrified mind are left behind, taking their proper subordinate place as just the mouthpiece of you, as soul.

I didn’t get too far before these guys started smiling, gesturing to each other  and some were laughing, they were shocked by my perfect pronunciation of their  names and titles. It was the last thing they expected from a badly dressed sunburnt Australian covered in zinc cream. I’d lived in Indonesia on and off for 20 years, as a hippy, a traveller, worked as a rigger on mining and construction sites. I’d lived in Singapore for more years and been married  into a Malay family and provided for all those kids, so I spoke a fluent style of street Malay which is much the same language as Bahasa Indonesia.

So that got me off to a great start and I breezed through the rest of the speech. That set the stage for a great event and I managed to avoid any more speeches which would spoil my excellent record.

***

The FESPIC sailing competition was at Port Dixon. The venue was a rambling, over the top Asian Yacht Club which are typically over-designed and built by optimistic developers who probably are trying to create a plush environment to keep their own boats. So these clubs usually have a lot of empty berths and excessive facilities for the very small membership. But it suited us perfectly. The usual is light winds with the occasional squall so there was no damage to gear or danger of an accident. Here we met 2 promising new female sailors, Cherry Pin Pin from Manila, and Ding from China.

With the Paralympics coming to Qingdao in 2008 the Chinese had some  work to do to prepare their teams to be competitive from scratch as there  was no disabled sailing in China at this stage. We learnt that they had brought to Qingdao about 50 disabled sporting people and put them through rigorous training and coaching at a full-time live-in camp. Ding was a very elegant young lady, missing a leg, but she wore a pink top and had pink padding on her single walking crutch, so I fitted her into the only pink Liberty we had in our fleet, and privately wished her the very best of luck.

It came down to the last race. She was just ahead of Desiree from Singapore and she went on to win the women’s Liberty Gold medal. I was looking forward to seeing her again in 2008 at the Paralympics, presuming she was such a good sailor she would surely be in the crew of the Chinese SKUD.  But when Jackie and I came to Qingdao Ding wasn’t there. No one knew much about her, except we were eventually told she had died. It all seemed a bit cold to me, I prefer happy endings, so I arrived at the conclusion that   Ding maybe had some sort of cancer which had led to her above knee amputation, which didn’t stop the progression that eventually killed her.

The Chinese Coach was a bastard. He screamed and yelled insults at Ding and the others in the Chinese team, until he was brought into the jury room and reprimanded and threatened with expulsion from the venue if he didn’t stop it, and start treating his people with respect. He did cool things in Malaysia, so he survived, but when we got to Qingdao in 2008 for the main event there he was again in full flight, but his reputation was now well known so the Chinese officials were warned in advance to get him under control before it blew up into an international embarrassment.

***

This story has many threads as we were progressing on several fronts. Along the way people have come and gone, they make a contribution, we learn and grow from each other, and then they move on. But one who has played an enormous role is David Staley, as he is a mainstreamer, while Jackie and I were ratbags operating outside the system.

Another was Phil Vardy, who played a major part as VP of IFDS, Coordinator of Sailability Australia, an advisory, managerial role for the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, and was joint Technical Delegate with Ian Harrison for the Qingdao 2008 Paralympics. Phil is a paraplegic, an ex university lecturer who had branded me an iconoclast as I seemed intent on working outside the system and showed little respect for sailing’s cherished icons and beliefs.

Actually I agreed with Phil on several fronts, as I did see sailing as akin to a religion. It has its pyramid structure, its high priests, its faithful practitioners and followers. It has its blue book of rules, which its thousands of jurors around the world would refer to when adjudicating a minion’s misdemeanour.

It’s sacrilegious I know, even iconoclastic, we were misguided reformers, but all we were trying to do was demonstrate that here were some great new tools that could introduce a lot of new people to sailing. We could help the sport become more inclusive, it could even help sailing change its image and become the most inclusive sport in the world. But all we sensed in return was a rebuff, they didn’t need us.

Unfortunately I was also a shy reclusive type, a moderate social misfit, which meant I was never much of a team player. In response to being rejected I did harden my criticism of the system, but over time that softened as it became obvious that drastic change is not possible for big mainstream organisations. They will always be seriously polarised when the end goal is either the Olympics or Paralympics. It’s the mainstream way, the system, it’s in their DNA.

***

We should go back to the beginning of “disabled” sailing in Australia when Yachting Victoria launched Sailability and called the national conference of the state branches to establish the national movement. It didn’t take long for me to see the actual enemy I faced was the inertia, the wall of resistance to change. So I started Sailing for Everyone Incorporated, which operated alongside but was in competition to Yachting Victoria’s Sailability program.

Sailability was used by Yachting Victoria to spruik (Australian slang word for a sales pitch, a speech) it’s social justice policy as required by the progressive Vic state government. So funding was easy to come by, some of which had purchased a trailer of 2.3 which we had supplied.

This package was used around the state to promote a mixture of disabled sailing and inclusive sailing for everyone, a difficult area for the yachting management to get their head around, it still is. Peter Donaldson was the Sailability Coordinator, his salary funded by grants from the State Government’s health or education departments.

The government is always trying to do the right thing, but it’s hard for a big bureaucracy to accept that the best thing to do is promote inclusion when it’s so much easier to follow the patronising path of segregation as that’s really how most people think. They get a short- term fix by doing something for those poor disabled people. See, I must be a ratbag.

One day Peter took the Sailability trailer to Glenmaggie Yacht Club in rural Eastern Victoria for a Sailability demo day, having arranged it with then commodore David Staley. It was a success, but David could see a much bigger story here; these little boats are just what were needed to bring more people into sailing, it’s a waste if they are only used for “disabled sailing”.

A few months later Peter chose a change in his life’s direction, while David was looking for an opportunity to move back to Melbourne, so he took on the

part-time role as Sailability coordinator.

We were a member of the Boating Industry Association who run the annual Melbourne Boat Show where our exhibit had grown into the sailing pool, an 8m wide x 25m long x 1m deep above ground swimming pool with a walkway and fans down one side, and an accessible walkway with ramp and hoist down the other. With a rounding mark at each end we ran different games and races for kids and anyone who wanted some fun.

That year David had just started as the Sailability Coordinator and we both remember very clearly sitting on the carpet by the pool and talking the philosophy of inclusion, and how we might go from here. It was a very significant meeting as it signalled to us that we could lay down our arms, here was a guy from within the system who understood what we were saying, but had his own path to follow, and although things might take off on a tangent with David, who’s to say it’s not going to deliver the best outcome.

It didn’t take long for Yachting Victoria to see who David really was and he took over as the Sail Melbourne Manager. Sail Melbourne was, still is one of World Sailing’s eight annual Olympic and invited classes regattas. David soon took over as secretary of Sailability Australia, then oversaw the restructure and amalgamation of Sailability Victoria and Sailing for Everyone to become Sailability – S4E. He became secretary of Blind Sailing International, Secretary of Hommerus International, another blind sailing outfit which promotes sound signals at the turning marks, then helped us form the International Access Class Association (later to become IHCA), and then became its Secretary.

When Phil Vardy stepped down as a VP of IFDS David took his place. All these secretarial positions at the same time tells you what a dedicated workaholic David Staley is. It was during this period that the 2004 IFDS Liberty Worlds was staged at Blairgowrie. As it was an event within Sail Melbourne, which DS managed, we worked with David to get the 2.3, 303 and Liberty accredited as ISAF classes.

If anyone says there was conflict of interest in DS holding all these positions, including being Secretary of the Access Class Association, to that we can only say there was no financial gain as it was all about the sport and how sailing can benefit and grow by opening up and embracing inclusion.

DS is without doubt the most aware and switched on administrator within the  global sport of sailing. He also knows a lot about governance and ethics. In his previous life he was a graphic artist, industrial designer and photographer. There are of course those with other agendas who will dispute that claim, but look closely at their agenda, what are the possibilities for sailing, what are it’s choices, you might find like me that the job is really about saving sailing, from itself.

When the SKUD was selected for the Paralympics we said to DS we need you, the sport needs you to come and work full time with us. It’s not work for

us, it’s with us. Jackie and I were outside the system, DS was our connection to it. DS had applied for the Exec Director role at Yachting Victoria so we had to wait for an answer, which came when we were at the annual meeting of Sailability Australia at the fabulous Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron. Jackie  and I were getting in our car after the meeting when DS was heading back inside, he turned and said to Jackie “by the way I didn’t get the gig.”    “Good,” said Jackie, “then you can come and work with us.”

We needed DS as we were about to take off into a whole new mainstream world with a foam sandwich ballasted skiff, and it had been co-designed with Julian Bethwaite, who had quite a reputation in the sailing world and people would ask me how was I getting on as Julian and I were chalk and cheese. So working with Julian meant we were in for some exciting times.

***

It’s a relief when you see all the intrigues and machinations that go on in the world as just what should be expected. It’s good to be able to say well it’s a duality down here, both sides are indispensable so someone has to play all those conflicting roles. Then you don’t get tied up in knots with emotion and anger when unexpected obstacles get in your way. They are just doing their job, someone has to play that role.

As for those exciting times, they began not long after the IFDS AGM when the SKUD was selected. Jackie and I left Singapore immediately after I’d loaded the prototype SKUD in a 20ft container and returned to Australia.

Serge, the IFDS President, stayed on for the ISAF Conference, and it was there that it was decided that Julian should take over as the “builder of note” for the class, which Julian told me on his return from the conference. There was only room for one of us, it couldn’t be both.

Of course we were disappointed it had gone this way, because it could have been a crossroads, a fork in the road for Julian to come on board with us, a partnership between two Australian operations, one the leader in high performance Skiffs, the other in accessible sailing. That would have been the ideal outcome, a bit of perfection down here at ground level, but too easy, let’s get real and turn it into a classic binary bubble biffo.

***

Our SKUD arrived back in Sydney and went to Woollahra Sailing Club, where Julian had moved his trimmed-down business. We  launched the boat and Julian and I went for a sail, the first time he had sailed a SKUD. It was blowing about 10 knots with gusts maybe 12 max 15. Julian was in the helm seat so I was crew and was ready to do as I was told. Up went the spinnaker and we skudded off down the harbour, and as soon as we had some room around us Julian turned onto a reach and we accelerated as I hauled in the spinnaker sheet.

Then to my surprise Julian bore away and gybed and around we went into a knockdown to see what would happen. There was no drama, we lay there with the spinnaker backed against the jib, we sat there for a moment on a 45 degree heel, then Julian turned the rudders and we started to turn, she stood up straight, went about and we bore away back on course with the spinnaker full. “Not bad,” said Julian.

I left the boat in Sydney so Julian could prepare some drawings of components and refine the fit out to bring the boat up to an “Olympic” standard. I returned to Melbourne. It was pretty hazy just where this was all going, but my first job was to pack up the moulds and jigs and ship everything we had to Batam so we could get the boat into production. When the container arrived I made a couple of quick trips to Batam and made patterns for the foam bulkheads and backbone, and jigs to place fittings like chain plates and rudder gudgeons. A bunch of boats were on order, so it was a combined effort to get this thing  moving.

Then a very provocative thing happened. Serge and Julian were at the IFDS World Championships in Perth WA, where Julian had given a presentation about this great new Class, then on the way out at Perth airport they signed an agreement between IFDS and Julian that he was the designer and was the builder, effectively cutting me off from the boat.

We were pretty pissed off and Jackie sprang into action. She arranged an official launch of the boat in Melbourne when David Kemp the Federal Government Minister for Sport was in town to open the Melbourne stopover of the Volvo Round the World racers. Phil Jones, the Executive Director of Australian Sailing was there, along with the President of Yachting Victoria, lots of photos and media stories all naming Access Sailing Systems as the designer and builder.

Jackie also entered us and our SKUD in the Australian Sports Awards, the innovation award sponsored by AusIndustry, the federal govt department who had sponsored us with a research and development grant to design and build the boat in the first place.

It was pretty exciting the night of the awards ceremony, AusIndustry had us sitting at their table, with Jackie and I sandwiched between the National and Victorian state managers. We won of course, and it was the first time sailing had ever won an award at these annual sports awards. Australian Sailing had a couple of tables over the other side of the room, Mark Bethwaite, Julian’s brother, was entered in a masters category for some achievement, but we were the winners. Phil Jones came over to congratulate us, so Jackie told him and anyone else who was listening that Julian was in the process of trying to relieve us of our boat, when obviously it was the creation of Access Sailing.

We were cut out of the boat though, but came to an agreement that we  would receive a 10% royalty on the wholesale price. The poor SKUD had to carry our 10%, Julian’s 2.75% because he designed the hull lines, then the IFDS also had their snout in the trough with a royalty. Anyway we went along

with this until the first boats were delivered and there was a stream of complaints and warranty claims, principally because the boats had been delivered with no gasket or carpet in the keel case so the keel had so much slop it crashed fore and aft and sideways with every pitch of the boat. Must have been a shock to the owners, and it was a shock to us when we were named as part responsible for warranty claims as Julian tried to spread the load. We responded with a cease and desist letter, to stop building our boat.

That brought on quite a response, with Julian announcing that we were now out. “No,” we replied, “you are. It always was our boat, which you signed a contract to build when you didn’t have that authority.” I headed for Sydney  so Jackie and I could marshal support to get this back on track.

***

A few months earlier Jackie had helped a Sydney businessman who was an icon in the local sailing world set up a program at one of his waterfront properties, so she rang Denis to see if he had a few minutes to give us advice.

We made our way to his secluded pontoon and explained what had happened. Denis then took out his mobile phone and rang his office and, without much introduction, asked “who is our best street fighter”, then “ok, ask Tony to call me ASAP”. A few minutes later his phone rang. “Tony, I’m down here at the marina with the kids. There’s a meeting on at Woollahra Sailing Club at 3 this afternoon. I want you to be there. This guy has stolen the kids’ Paralympic boat and we want to help get it back”.

When the call ended Denis said to us “this one’s on me”. Denis O’Neil keeps a low profile, so is not known well by the public, but he’s known in sailing circles for his lifelong participation in sailing, including several Olympics, and as a waterfront property developer. A few years later would see Denis  honoured with firing the starter’s cannon for the 2018 Sydney to Hobart ocean yacht race.

Later I rang Julian to say yes we would be there for the meeting, and by the way, did he know Denis O’Neil? “Yes, if you mean that filthy rich guy” said Julian. I went on – “Well Denis is lending us a lawyer to help sort out this SKUD contractural business so he will be there with us today”. Silence, then – “Oh, is that really necessary”?

Well yes we felt it was necessary as we were now out of our depth and alone we didn’t stand a chance. After the meeting we stood in the carpark and Tony rang Denis to report. He told Denis that in his opinion Julian was planning to sell his business in the near future and would be trying to use this Paralympic Class as an asset to add gloss to the business value, but also generate a royalty revenue stream for himself. Amazingly just 3 years later, much as Tony had predicted, the business was sold and Julian had moved sideways.

This all precipitated a crisis meeting. Serge would fly from the USA, Tim and Paul, our builders, arrived from Singapore, David Staley and I were staying at Jackie’s, and both sides had lawyers. We met in the board room at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in Rushcutters Bay. If big boat sailing has an inspirational hub in Australia, this is it. High performance skiffs are an Australian phenomena and Sydney Harbour is their home, so the harbour is the heart of sailing in Australia, particularly for skiffs. Rushcutters and CYC, who run the Sydney to Hobart, would be it’s spiritual centre.

But using “spiritual” here is not a good analogy in this story, as spiritual infers it’s to do with spirit, to do with the Oneness. This might somehow be vaguely analogous with the highest aspects of using the wind to dance through waves to arrive in a trance-like heavenly state, but we’re not talking about that.  So we can call the Cruising Yacht Club at the head of Rushcutters Bay the Mind-Centre of sailing, it’s the home of Yachts, capital Y, the symbols of power, money and success in a pleasure focused society.

We worked through an agreement which allowed Julian the right to build the boat till the last race in Qingdao, then Hansa would become the official builder. While Julian was the builder Hansa would receive a 10% of wholesale price royalty, but when the roles were reversed this royalty would go to Bethwaite, until we arrived at 50 boats on the water, when the royalty would reduce to 2.75% split between Julian and Martin Billoch, the Argentinian naval architect of the SKUD’s lines.

After lunch the meeting continued at Woollahra SC, with me walking out over the impasse caused by refusing to accept one third of the warranty claims, which had sparked this crisis in the first place. There was still a tussle to come on who would be considered the designer of the boat, which we won, but not in the mind of the elite sailing world, who consider Julian to be the rockstar designer.

In truth it was a combined effort, my concept, Julian and Martin provided the hull lines and outline of a sail plan, which I turned into a sailboat. Julian’s profile helped get it selected, then his high performance experience prepared it for Paralympic competition, which I would have struggled to do. So Julian’s involvement was invaluable, but in hindsight the SKUD could have had less HP focus and been made more user friendly, which we attempted to do when we took over building the boat after the 2008 games.

It was a great experience for me as it took us into the world of elite sport, which may appear glamorous but it’s also a high stakes uncompromising battle of minds, legalistic and ugly at times, but also quite euphoric. For me it was the stage for another level of the games mind plays that I needed to experience, so I thank Julian for his excellent performance costarring with  me in Act 1 of the SKUD’s exciting story.

***

So we had a framework, and moved forward. The next job for us was to ensure we filled the SKUD’s 12 nation quota. The first qualifier was in September 2007 in Rochester in New York State on the US side of Lake Ontario. We had scheduled our first Hansa Combined Classes World Championships to be held in Whitby on the Canadian shores of the same Lake.

The SKUD was selected for the Paralympics by the IFDS, who ran disabled sailing on behalf of ISAF, now World Sailing, who gave IFDS the right to run 5 disabled sailing events each year. So the SKUD in our Hansa Open Worlds could only participate in an “International” event.

We had shipped a container of 2.3, 303 and Liberty from Australia for our Worlds, including 2 SKUDs, one for Ame Barnbrook and Denis Critchly, and another for Bill Brady, an aspiring Sydney-based disabled sailor. From Singapore we sent 2 more SKUDs, one for Dan Fitzgibbon and the other for Amy Kelehan of Ireland or Bento Amaral of Portugal. After our Worlds we had to get those  4 SKUDs across to Rochester in the USA. Then back to Whitby to ship out of the country.

All these boats had been shipped using a carnet, which meant the same equipment had to leave again. Instead, we left behind a number of Liberty which were sold to private owners in Toronto, and I can’t understand how we did this.

A note here from 2023. These Liberty we left behind were eventually discarded and unloved as the Class wasn’t, still isn’t supported by Canadian Sailing administrators as they promote their home grown Martin 16. This is another example of small mindedness which deprives local sailors the opportunity to participate in really wholesome world class events like our Hansa Worlds, but we will deal with that in detail in a later chapter.

But I’ll insert a provocative sentence here — the SKUD was never the best boat for the Paralympics, the Liberty was and still is. But the SKUD was the best boat to beat the Martin 16.

Back to our timeline, we also had to return the 2 new SKUDs back to Singapore as they were to be used in the March 2008 IFDS SKUD World Championship, which was the second qualifier for the Paralympics.

After this event we shipped one of those SKUDs, number 020, over to France, along with 2 Liberty, to have these evaluated for the single person and 3 person craft for the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Paralympics. Those evaluation trials were in April 2008, and although we weren’t successful in either of these trials, we also hoped to encourage a French entrant in the September 2008 Paralympics, although only 5 months away, as we still had only filled 11 of our 12 available slots.

NZ had qualified but didn’t take up their slot as they had a policy of only competing where they thought they had a good chance of winning a medal, and France declined because maybe we didn’t make much of an effort.  As it turned out later, our then distributor in France were actually working against the SKUD and trying to have their own NEO adopted as the 2P equipment for Rio and Tokyo 2020. A totally fanciful endeavour obvious to everyone, except our delusional distributors.

On the side of all this GBR ordered 2 new SKUDs to be shipped to Miami on their account to compete in the 2008 Miami OCR, and it is here that Nikki Birrell appeared as crew for Alexandra Rickham, who had been the helm in this team. But here in Miami GBR were trying something new. After having gained assurance that the SKUD rules were locked down and wouldn’t be changed again before the Games, they thought they had found a loophole where Alexandra would be the navigator and tactician sitting aft in a canting seat, while Nikki would sail the boat single handed. So Nikki sat on a saddle seat with a joystick he could support with a knee, with both hands free to work the sheets.

It worked pretty well and showed promise, so Nikki and Alexandra were selected as the GBR team, which knocked out Alan Smith, a genuine quad who, in the spirit of the SKUD, sat in the back and had been one of the SKUD’s key supporters. Sailing administrations can be ruthless at this level, but these shenanigans can come back to bite you, as we will see later.

***

Picking up the timeline again back in March 2008, the IFDS SKUD 2P World championships in Singapore, which was the second qualifier for the Qingdao Paralympics. This was a great event. There were 5 spots to be won. All the top professional teams had already qualified in Rochester, with China the host nation making up the 12. We were in Singapore, surrounded by some under-resourced nations, so this was their chance to qualify.

Malaysia was now a “disabled sailing” nation as they had recently hosted the FESPIC Games. Mustakin had won a gold medal in the men’s Liberty at FESPIC so it wasn’t surprising to see him handling the sheets on a SKUD. Their program was run out of the navy base in Lumut, and still with Zainal the same coach from FESPIC, while the mandatory girl in the team was on the helm and from a disabled sports organisation.

But the standout was the team from the Philippines, with Cherrie Pin Pin as crew, and Pedro, a short-statured fisherman from the same village as their coach. They had tried to find a suitably disabled guy in Manila, he needed to classify as an IFDS Functional Classification System (FCS) One or Two to qualify as the helmsperson, but then they found Pedro. He was a sailer of sorts, as he sailed daily out to catch fish to feed his family in his outrigger canoe with hessian sails on bamboo pole spars. So Pedro wound up in Singapore to be introduced to a SKUD. They had little money, so were sponsored by Frankie, who we worked with closely to make this happen.

Technically a team would qualify if they were amongst the top 5 unqualified nations to compete, and to have competed you had to be, at the bare technical least, in the proximity of the starting line for at least one race. But  of course Pedro and Cherrie did much better than that. For me it is one of our favourite achievements, I’d better speak for myself here and say my favourite achievement, as others involved haven’t realised just how good it is to have created a boat and got it selected as a Paralympic Class, and got its second qualifier to Singapore so that people like Cherrie and Pedro could actually sail it and qualify for the Paralympics.

Imagine the stories Pedro can tell his great-grandkids about sailing a spinnaker powered skiff and the glitz and glamour of the opening ceremony in Qingdao. It was certainly a highlight for us, and just how that first Paralympics happened could be a book on its own, the story behind how the protagonists cards were played, only to be trumped by the Joker.

As part of our effort to fill all the available slots in the Paralympic competition, we had committed to charter SKUDs to Ireland and Portugal, so we shipped 2 boats with Singapore’s 2 boats to Qingdao, twice, as there was also an International event in May 2008. This was really a practice event for the Paralympics, but the boats couldn’t stay so they went back to Singapore to be shipped again for the main event in September.

Unfortunately on their way back to Qingdao the two boats lashed in the roof, (our two), their sterns came loose and the hulls came down on top of the 2 Singapore boats sitting on their road trailers below, chafing a hole in each of our hulls.  But these were easily fixed on the hard stand in the preparation days leading up to the competition. Again you can see all these container movements, for a small operation like Hansa, looking back at it now it’s hard to see how it all ever happened.

***

The IFDS were given 8 invitations for guests to attend the Paralympic sailing. Jackie and I were offered 2, which we eagerly accepted. I’d been to FESPIC and seen our boats being taken seriously by MNAs with big teams, team managers, coaches and coach boats, but Jackie hadn’t seen the scale of  this aspect of what she had created. David should also have been there as he was an IFDS executive committee member, but we had been recently swindled by our bookkeeper so DS had to stay behind and manage the mess.

Jackie and I had already made several trips to Qingdao as we intended to build on the Paralympics to establish an accessible sailing program in China. Our factory then was in Melbourne and Melbourne’s sister city is Tianjin, an industrial port city near Beijing. We were engaged with Melbourne City Council’s International office and with their other sister cities around the world.

On the outside we are sailboat designers and builders, but that’s just the hardware which facilitates the inclusive community sailing programs we promote. These programs and the philosophy of inclusion are possible because of the universal design principles which inspire our designs. It’s a full circle from good design, manufacturing, social application, to community benefit. It’s these qualities which appeal to local governments which help us start programs in Melbourne City Council (MCC) sister cities like in Thessaloniki in Greece, and Osaka in Japan, and which we tried to duplicate in Tianjin in China.

We may have been too idealistic, wanting to find a sympathetic business, or  a young person we could help start a business which would take the original vision of building a sailboat to introduce Chinese people to sailing. A sailboat of universal design is for everyone, not only for disabled people, which is  how they are usually branded in the western sailing nations.  So in hindsight it was an unrealistic goal, or at least it was premature and before it’s time, as it’s a huge ask for someone, a young person in China to go against the flow.

Because streaming out of Beijing is a rigid policy of segregation of disabled people in sport. There is mainstream sport, and disabled sport, which we see everywhere of course, but in China it’s a central government policy flowing out into the provinces with rock solid bricks and mortar structures locking public policy in place. It would be a very courageous young person who would challenge that structure.

MCC run an exchange program with Tianjin City Council where staff would visit Melbourne for 3 months to experience how things were done in a western bureaucracy. So one day each cycle we would have around 20 new recruits at Docklands for their first and unexpected experience of sailing.

Through this MCC program we received several offers from relatives and associates of the visitors to take on a distributorship or manufacturing role in China and to follow our revolutionary policy of inclusion and create a Sailing for Everyone network across China. But none of these candidates had any fibreglass or boat-building experience. So we didn’t take up any of these offers. In hindsight they were probably the best we would get. It’s probably true that it’s near impossible to change someone’s personality, but you can teach the right person fibreglass production.

***

Leading up to the Paralympics we had donated 6 of our C Cranes for use on the Paralympic sailing pontoons, which would then be donated to NFP inclusive sailing programs after the event. Jackie participated in an intravenous Stem Cell treatment program at a hospital about 60km inland from Qingdao, so while there we visited Dong Hai, who was Director of the onshore facilities for the Olympic/Paralympic venue. We were driven to Qingdao in a hospital ambulance, accompanied by Katy, our young Chinese interpreter, who was mid way through a masters degree in foreign languages.

This turned hilarious as it was notoriously hard to gain access to these  closed local government administration offices, but we arrived in an ambulance with our butler and translator Katy, so when we arrived at the entrance gate our driver turned on his flashing ambulance lights and we were directed inside to park in the VIP spot by the main entrance doors.

After our official business with Dong Hai he asked if there was anything they could do to help our cause in China, so we asked if Katy could be   considered for a volunteer’s role during the coming Olympic/Paralympic events. When the applications opened Katy had been away at her home village. There were many thousands of applications so she had missed the boat, but she was highly qualified and wound up the secretary to the Jury, which was a very prestigious role. We were very happy to be able to help,  and our network was growing and seemed to be going in a positive direction.

When we flew to Qingdao for the Games it was very exciting. We arrived at the airport and were met as VIPs, there was a car waiting, our hotel was one of the finest in this city of 9 million people.

Qingdao is 300km from Beijing and had been chosen to run the sailing competition, so Qingdao was going to put on quite a display and here we were for the Paralympics with all the resources and people who had run the huge Olympic event still all in place.

So everywhere you turned were people waiting to serve you. The VIPs lounge down at the venue was extraordinary, with gourmet food, wines and dining facilities, but we were the only invited VIPs there. But it wasn’t all ours, as IFDS officials, foreign ambassadors, senior Chinese officials would also pass through, but usually we were there on our own.

We were given passes to the pontoons and the rest of the venue, the athletes village, which was the new Intercontinental Hotel, which backed onto the marina. The city was lit up with hologram-like posters of Olympic and Paralympic classes covering the exterior walls of the downtown high- rise buildings, which included our SKUD as it was the most photogenic of the 3 Paralympic classes, and the only one with a multi-coloured spinnaker.

Of the Olympic classes the most popular was the Tornado, the high performance catamaran. It was the Chinese people’s choice, and deemed the most spectacular, and its image was everywhere.

But at the next ISAF conference the Tornado was dropped from forthcoming Olympics competitions, which says something about poor real world judgement and how internal politics influences ISAF and leads to poor decisions being made.

The opening ceremony in Qingdao was extraordinary, we of course knew it was on but hadn’t taken much interest, but luckily we were in our hotel room when the house phone rang to say our car had arrived and was waiting for us, so please come down when you are ready. So quickly we got dressed and went down in the lift, the van had a rear mount hoist, and off we went with a police escort, traffic lights through the city were controlled so always green, with saluting police at each intersection.

We were a bit shocked as we hadn’t expected any of this, but all the Chinese knew what they required of us, so we went along for the ride. On arrival at the ceremony venue we were ushered to our places with Jackie sitting next to Pauline Harrison in the front VIP row. I was Jackie’s carer so sat next to her at the end of the row. It showed everyone who might have wondered who we were, that we were actually front row VIPs, but to me it was obviously just another of the Joker’s, the master puppeteer’s stunts.

The opening ceremony was huge, a mini version of the main event going on in Beijing. It must have been the biggest opening ceremony for a sailing event ever, never to be beaten. Qingdao, capital city of the Han people, home of Confucius and much of Chinese culture, heralding itself as the sailing city of China.

***

And next day the competition began. The first SKUD race was miraculously won by China so the red Chinese-flag spinnaker was blazoned across the front page of all local newspapers. But the memory for me sitting quietly in the rear of the Technical Delegate’s RIB (Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat) between races, when over came the Jury boats and a discussion ensured about the interpretation of the seating rules, particularly focussed on the GBR boat being run single-handed by Nikki.  The unconventional seat allowed him not only to do the steering and work the sheets, it also allowed him to lean out onto the side deck.

The question was: the rules state the crew must stay seated, did an infringement warrant a warning or a DSQ? Serge, the IFDS President, driving his own RIB had come alongside to join our rafted up flotilla. He answered the question with “it’s a DSQ” and put his boat into gear and motored away.

What a moment for me, sitting alone as if invisible in the rear of the TD’s RIB, listening to the Jury discuss, then decide that one of their number would follow behind the GBR SKUD and take photos as evidence if needed.

The outcome of GBR being followed everywhere by a jury boat would have destabilised Nikki, and meant if he chose one tack, the rest of the fleet chose another, as it’s uncomfortable to be the focus of jury attention. Which meant GBR would eventually win a race or two purely because they fluke’d the best side of the course, which they did, once. But they were very unlikely to win a  medal, which they didn’t. What GBR were doing may not have been legally cheating, but they were certainly outside the spirit of the Class and the event, which was intended to give FCS Ones and Twos a chance to win in an even competition.

To recap, the IFDS Functional Classification System was designed for the three person Sonar in the days when there weren’t many Ones and Twos racing. So it was slanted towards lesser disabilities. A One covered the full spectrum of quadriplegics, a Two included high level Paraplegics. So to helm the SKUD you needed to fit in there, whereas the crew sitting forward could be up to a Seven, which was having a malfunctioning limb above the elbow or knee. Also at least one crew member had to be female. So obviously the GBR team was sailing outside the intent and spirit of the SKUD.

Another highlight of the racing was the Philippine team of Cherrie and Pedro beating Singapore’s Jovin and Desiree in one race instead of coming last, but they did finish every race, sailing in a borrowed Chinese SKUD. Just having them there was an outstanding achievement. They had come here on the slimmest of budgets. It was never really discussed, and no one ever asked, but what boat they would sail?  We knew China owned 3 SKUDS and only one would be racing, so surely they would lend one to their Philippine neighbour. For a while it looked like a diplomatic request would need to be made by the PHI embassy in Beijing.

Another highlight was Malaysia winning a race, when the girl in the helm seat had severe cerebral palsy and had been plucked from a disability organisation 3 months prior and given a crash course in sailing. CP can be a hard disability to adapt equipment for, but the Malaysian team had fitted a men’s bicycle handle bars to the joystick so she got a good 2 handed grip and it worked.

But the prize has to go to Nick Scandone, who won the gold medal. Nick was by far the best sailor but had ALS disease, which is an aggressive type of muscular dystrophy. Each day the USA coach and Nick’s brother would prepare the boat to the utmost detail, taping down anything that had potential to cause a problem. At the last minute, when most other boats had left the dock, Nick would arrive, driving his power wheelchair, shielded from the sun by a small umbrella. They would detach him from his respirator, lift his depleted body into the boat, strap him in, and tape his hands to the steering levers – for  once a race starts there is no turning back, no outside assistance allowed. Maureen, his crew, can’t leave her seat to help, so everything needs to be perfect.

In the end Nick and Maureen didn’t need to sail the last day, a Friday, as they had already won the gold medal. Nick died 3 months after he won that competition which is both a demonstration of his determination, the determination of his wife, brother and coach, but also a demonstration of  how good a boat is the SKUD that provides a platform where a guy who is   so weak and near the end of a degenerative disease can still win the Paralympic gold medal.

Nick’s wife was reported as saying she thanked the SKUD for giving her and Nick two extra years together. To  her I say thanks for being such a wholesome part of the story.

On the last day’s racing we had arranged an audience with Madam Zhang, the chair of the Qingdao Organising Committee. We didn’t know what to expect. We had about 30 minutes, as she was to be there officiating at the medals ceremony. Jackie, Katy and I made our way over to the Intercontinental where, just inside the entrance from the marina, were 2 big ornate doors leading to ceremonial meeting rooms.

We peered in the first but the room was empty, so we we moved to the second, where the red carpet led straight to the rear, ending at a table with a huge vase of flowers, behind which sat Belle, Madam Zhang’s translator. On the right side of the flowers were seated Madam Zhang and her entourage, with an empty row of seats on the left. This would prove to be yet another exciting event for Katy as here she was acting as Jackie’s official translator. My role at all these types of events is wheelchair pusher.

We took our places and, after introductions and pleasantries, Jackie offered  Madam Zhang a gift of 6 boats to start an inclusive sailing program, a legacy and thank you from the Sailing for Everyone Foundation.

I realise that the rules say the Paralympics cannot be used for any tangential promotion, and Serge had said to me when we crossed paths in the Guests VIP lounge a few days earlier “I hope you are behaving yourself while your here”, so I suppose this type of meeting while everyone was busy out on the racecourse is the sort of activity he was talking about. I’d said, “Yes,  of course Serge, what  sort of mischief could we get into here, in this so heavily policed space?”

***

We stayed on after everyone left. We had some business to finish, and Jackie had some more stem cell treatment, which itself was extraordinary as she was taxied to and from the hospital in one of the official Organising Committee’s wheelchair accessible vans. It wasn’t till we got to the airport to leave, where we were again met by the original arrival meeting party. This time they took us through the VIP channel and they thanked us and said we were the last offical visitors to the Olympic/Paralympic festival to leave, so now they could pack up and leave too.

It was a memorable farewell to an extraordinary experience, but it was a bit embarrassing that we had kept that party of volunteers waiting there at the airport for those extra days.

We came back to Qingdao several times as there was a World Sailing Conference and when our gift to Madam Zhang arrived we launched Ai Hang Hai, which means I Love Sailing Asia as the NFP which would use these boats in inclusive programs around the region. But none of this was to be, as we would fall victim to our own enthusiasm. We drove on without the  blessing of the real power brokers in the background, and eventually our good intentions would end up a pile of rotting rubble on the marina, as a warning to any other pretenders who try to do business in China without a solid backer.

We were told by a foreigner that he would be more respected by the government than we were because his was an easily understood commercial business, whereas we would be disrespected as we gave our things away  for free. But when we told middle-class Chinese friends who were shocked   at the obstacles that had stopped us, they disagreed entirely, that our business model was for the benefit of the little people, it would be welcome and supported by the government.

But maybe that’s an idealist’s view, the reality is another story, particularly when you bore down and saw the business interests with political influence who were going to make sure we couldn’t succeed.

But when you step back and look at Qingdao promoting itself as China’s Sailing City, well that can never really be as it’s quite a way north, so it has a cool climate. Offshore is the cold North China Sea, and Taiwan. No set of touristy tropical islands to visit, so there is really nowhere to go. It’s even quite perilous cruising south through the shoals and currents, whereas further south there are much better placed “sailing cities”. So Qingdao as China’s “sailing city” was an artificial political construct based on media hype and rent a crowd of school children.

The very next city south is Rhizao, which boasts an extraordinary development of marinas, and sports facilities catering to all forms of water sport, from power boat racing, canoes, kayaks, sailing, paddle boats. Each with their own grandstands, pontoons, lakes and beaches, all interconnected, and all laying dormant and underused. Why didn’t this place host the Olympic and Paralympic sailing?

Politics, of course. And for our part, we didn’t follow the rules. We couldn’t, as the path was already blocked by already established outfits who followed the well-trodden and accepted traditions. They are all hooked up through World Sailing, so it’s furthering the status quo, where we are minnows, ratbags outside the system.

So the only way for us to succeed is to take on a powerful sponsor, who needs a return. But our business model doesn’t deliver returns to investors, it’s about volunteers who give more than they take. I think the nice middle-class community-minded friends who were shocked at our failure, and who thought the government would welcome our magnanimous approach, I think in the end they were naive, and didn’t want to acknowledge how China actually worked. The Marxist theory behind communism is not how it really plays out as just like everywhere else on the planet self interest is the driving force.

But maybe I’m wrong, maybe the connections we are looking for will read this and say hello, because we are always ready to have another go.

***

We have to go back a little to pick up the thread about INAS, the global peak body for intellectual-disability sport. Many will think, and we hear it all the time, that Special Olympics, SO, is that body, but it’s not. SO is an organisation started by Eunice Kennedy, sister of John F Kennedy, President of the USA, and was incorporated in 1968 by the Joseph P Kennedy Foundation.

INAS, on the other hand, was established in 1986 in the Netherlands to promote the inclusion of people with an intellectual disability in elite sport. In that year INAS became a member of the ICC, the International Coordinating Committee, the organisation which became the IPC.

INAS is therefore a foundation member of the IPC. It always disappointed  us how ISAF could handball “disabled sailing” to IFDS, another Netherlands- spawned sporting body, when IFDS had no mechanism to include people with an intellectual disability, when technically it was easy to fix, so the issue was apparently political. 

It seemed odd, or maybe no one had thought it through, because all IFDS needed to do was talk to INAS and use the INAS classification system, which was recognised by the IPC, then IFDS would truly represent disabled people, ending the exclusion of intellectual disabled sailors from the Paralympic sailing competition.

It was odd but perfectly understandable as there are all sorts of politics and animosities in sport, and disabled sport is no exception. When it was first mooted that there needed to be a 3rd discipline in Paralympic sailing, one which encouraged more severely disabled sailors, there was a loud cry against the change. The last thing the loudest voices of the lesser-disabled sailors wanted was for the pool of funding to be spread further, as severely disabled people needed carers and specialist equipment, which would bog the sport down.

But really it looks like it’s about being a big fish in a little pond. You are a disabled sailor, so you don’t want more fish, and you don’t want an even more disabled sailor stealing the limelight. And it was the same when it was proposed that Intellectually Disabled sailors could be included, with the added slant that we don’t want intellectually disabled people on our boat.

You see a similar situation when trying to introduce gender equity quotas. Where it would have been very fair to mandate that at least one of the crew of the 3P Sonar should be female, that was rejected by the sailors or the MNAs voting delegates, and it was the new 2P SKUD that had to have at least one female in the crew. Plus, one of the crew had to be an FCS one or two. This put the SKUD under a lot of pressure and shows up the selfish attitude within elite disabled sailing.

Add it all up and you don’t see a united sport making considered decisions as to what the best way to grow the sport and ensure we maintain our Paralympic status. All this is pretty obvious if you can get back far enough for a clear wide angle view.

Our Hansa events have always included numerous people with ID sailing in open competition, which is the reason Australian sailors do so well at SO sailing events, as these sailors compete in open events in SP and 2P boats, they know the rules of sailing. Many have a driving licence, so are very aware of the rules of the road, on both land and sea. But they were excluded from IFDS World Championships and Paralympic Sailing.

As said, INAS was a foundation member of the IPC, with several sports for ID athletes included in the Paralympics, all using the INAS classification system to determine eligibility. So IFDS could have been using this system as well, just as IFDS used the IPC recognised Vision Impaired classification to include VIP sailors in IFDS competition. That’s how easy it should have been to include ID Sailors. But the official IFDS line was that there was no way to classify intellectual disability under the IFDS FCS. Well yes, that’s true, so let’s use the INAS system instead. So presumably it was politically difficult, and inertia prevailed.

***

In 2007 Jackie and I went to Tunisia for the INAS AGM, where sailing would be ratified as the 13th official INAS sport. Jackie had been working on this for a couple of years as we had identified the problem and could see how easy it was to correct. Here we were with numerous ID sailors competing in our Open events, we had our SKUD selected as a Paralympic Class so we knew how the system works. David Staley worked with us on many fronts and was a committee member of the IFDS Executive, so it looked like just a formality.

In 2009 the IFDS passed a resolution recognising INAS as the peak body representing ID sport so there was official movement. Things were moving slowly, but in the right direction. Next step was to run an international sailing event for sailors with an INAS classification.

Unfortunately for the INAS project, from 2007 on we were committed to quickly sorting out the raft of SKUD  problems we inherited after taking over the boat post Qingdao, to  get the MKll boat distributed in time to compete in the 2010 IFDS Worlds in Medemblik. The Paralympics follow the Olympics so are on the same 4 year cycle, but typically the Worlds the year after the Games, ie 2009 is a bit of a practice event, but 2010 was a qualifier for the London 2012 Paralympics, so we had to have the Mkll participating and in production.

So obviously INAS wasn’t our priority as the SKUD occupied our attention, otherwise we would have kept pushing and could have got something through years earlier. Eventually, after numerous attempts and false starts we decided to run an INAS event ourselves, on the Shoalhaven River in Nowra, where we are based.

In February 2016 Nowra Community Sailing Club ran the INAS International Regatta followed by the 2016 NSW Hansa State Championships. We had sailors from Hong Kong, and the Sailing Instructions listed eligibility including those sailors who had an INAS classification and were entered on the INAS Master List for the category of sailing. As this was a new initiative, those sailors who were determined to be eligible for INAS classification could also compete.  This was the case with the HK sailors, they had attempted classification in Hong Kong but had been rejected by a recalcitrant INAS classifier who insisted it could not be done as sailing was not an INAS sport.

It was a great little event. Stephen Wilson, an Australian IFDS classifier, had attended and submitted a report to the IFDS classification committee with his endorsement and recommendations. And I wrote a report to WS and IFDS with my observations. And INAS had added sailing as one of its sports, and we had some sailors on the INAS master list.

So it looked like we had fulfilled the requirement for an Inas sailing event, but due to some internal issues it wasn’t pushed forward so our event never officially recognised.

This highlights 2 related irregularities in the structure of sailing that would eventually need to be corrected and I’ve touched on both, and while they were both in the pipeline they came to a head and were resolved as a result of sailing being rejected from the Paralympics. So being expelled had its silver lining so to speak.

First we have IFDS, an independent Dutch disabled sailing organisation having succeeded in achieving Paralympic status for disabled sailing, not ISAF, who manage mainstream Olympic sailing, which led to ISAF dissolving it’s internal disabled sailing committee and hand-balling responsibility for disabled sailing to the IFDS. This was the easy solution for ISAF, who probably had little understanding or appreciation of the aspirations of disabled people, but it was a negative move as it formally pushed disabled sailing further from the mainstream, into a segregated stream which is not the direction progressive organisations would chose to go, even in those days.

Then to exacerbate this, IFDS didn’t represent all disabled people, only those with physical disabilities. That’s a far cry from the principal of inclusion as it excluded a large cohort of disabled people and to us was unacceptable. But with a big organisation like ISAF, with membership like the United Nations, change was going to take time, particularly when the general membership seemed to have zero awareness that there was even a problem.

Things were, however, moving on both these fronts, as ISAF and IFDS had forged a close relationship with ISAF seconding to IFDS an admin secretary working in the ISAF offices. IFDS held its AGM and mid-year meetings in conjunction with the major ISAF meetings, and Serge Jorgensen, while IFDS President, had begun discussions with ISAF to dissolve IFDS and bring disabled sailing back inside the mainstream body. It was felt within IFDS though, that there were advantages in IFDS being a Dutch Association as the arrangement delivered considerable independent funding and independence, whereas once wholly inside ISAF you would lose control of your budget and be at the mercy of the behemoth.

David Kellett was the Treasurer of ISAF up till the 2014 AGM when his tenure on the ISAF board would end, and he made a presentation to the IFDS general meeting held at that conference where he canvassed the merger of the 2 organisations. David ran for ISAF President in 2015 but was unsuccessful. If he had succeeded, the merger could have been completed under more controlled circumstances.

But as it turned out, the IPC dropped sailing from the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, which threw the sailing world into turmoil. In response World Sailing sprang into action, dissolving the IFDS and replacing it with the Para World Sailing Committee, and the effort for reinstatement began. Disabled Sailing needed to expand its participation base so the name INAS started to be mentioned with questions being asked. Not including ID people wasn’t the cause of sailing being removed from the Paralympics, but I doubt that anomaly had never been noticed within the IPC, when INAS, after all, was a foundation member of the IPC.

So presumably PWS was moving towards negotiations with INAS about how they could cooperate, and we were noticing different language when talking to PWS officials, which, like a broken record we pursued at every opportunity. The awareness changed from having no idea who or what INAS was, to “ID people have their own Olympics”  (a reference to Special Olympics), to “we are working on it”.

The demise of Paralympic sailing dried up the funding from each national government funded Paralympic committee to the nation’s MNAs, which ended the funding of their elite high performance Paralympic programs, so all the Sonar and SKUD teams were out of a job.

So World Sailing’s newly formed Para Word Sailing Committee ran trials to identify new classes which would quickly bring new nations and sailors onboard in a huge effort to demonstrate to the IPC that sailing had the numbers and should be included in the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. The 303 was selected as one of the new classes.

It says a lot about elite sailing that of all those sailors who had lost out, only one individual sailor came across to sail in the 303 PWS Championships. The usual attitude is the 303 can’t possibly be considered seriously as a Paralympic boat, it doesn’t have all the adjustments and usual gadgets, even though it’s exactly what’s needed to bring in many new nations and  thousands of new sailors to have a chance at impressing the IPC.

That sailor was Jens Kroker, the German Sonar skipper, so he was there at the 2018 PWS Worlds in Sheboygan, racing in a 303. I described to Jens the crazy situation where PWS needs every disabled sailor it can find, but it rejects ID sailors when INAS, who represent ID athletes is a foundation member of the IPC, when it is so easy to include them. That conversation was at his car as he prepared to go racing, we agreed to catch up later to explain in more detail. He’s an astute German guy, so he wanted the facts.

The closing and medal ceremony was held at a boutique brewery so there was beer being drunk and a non-drinking ex-alcoholic recluse like me   shrinks into the background to watch, which meant also watching Jens as he hadn’t come back to me yet, and time was running out. I was going to be  very disappointed, but not surprised, if this had faded from importance. But then Jens appeared and we sat down at a table surrounded by the raucous crowd.

He was very interested. This was an easy fix. I would send all the  background info I had, here at last was one of the most respected sailors, with a voice on the WS Athlete’s Commission. At last something was going to happen.

The next WS and PWS conference was in October in Sarasota. I wasn’t there but Jens was, and so was David Staley, who was on the PWS Committee  and usually the lone voice calling for action to include intellectually disabled people. David was excited and surprised when Jens raised the matter and there was instant approval. What a great idea. It shall be done.

In all honesty it’s time was coming anyway, things happen and doors open either by getting a bigger sledge hammer and you break the door down, which is like throwing a lot of money at a campaign, which can have serious consequences in retaliation, or it’s achieved through organic change.

This had been a 15-year-long exercise in the latter, which Jackie started in 2005, then INAS adopted sailing at their AGM in 2007, which IFDS acknowledged in 2009, and which was eventually adopted by WS in 2020. It’s  a demonstration of how the behemoth moves, how slowly things happen, how difficult change can be, and how voices from the outside like ours can fall on deaf ears. It’s probably advantageous to attend conferences, wear a navy blue blazer with gold buttons, and network the room, but I’m to shy for that sort of mainstream thing.

In 2022 INAS changed its name to Virtus and held their World Games in Brisbane Australia, with water sports held on the Gold Coast, and for the first time sailing was included. With Brisbane hosting the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics there’s a chance we could see sailing reinstated, which would also see intellectually disabled sailors competing. But let’s not hold our breath.

***

As this chapter is about the Paralympics we need pick up the timeline from the 2008 Qingdao Games. Our agreement with Julian Bethwaite was he would be responsible for producing the SKUD up to the final race in  Qingdao, then we would take over. We followed through with this plan, but the boat had some serious problems which we needed to quickly fix.

Like the Olympics, the Paralympics are a 4 year cycle, so very little happens in the first year of the new cycle,  which gave us 2 years before the new Mkll boat would line up for the next IFDS World Championships. We needed that sort of time frame as the proposed changes were pretty extensive.

During the event I’d managed to discuss the proposed changes with Serge Jorgensen the IFDS President, and Gene Hinkel the IFDS Measurer. I met with them separately in the boat park and quickly ran through the rationale for the mods and got a nod for each which is all I needed. It’s a sensitive issue as this was a brand new boat, it had just completed its first cycle and here we were proposing major changes. So I’d have to formalise the mods in a presentation to the IFDS board and get approval to proceed. So I needed that nod so as not to blindside the committee, and knew how far we could go. In hindsight I wish I’d been able to go a bit further, but there was a limit as we couldn’t create a faster boat and make the Mkl boats redundant. Any performance enhancing changes had to be retrofittable on the older boats.

But it’s left me with the vision of a Mklll SKUD if anyone is interested. And a very special SKUD, a revision we will need to complete before this journey is over. It’s the SKUD 18 Cruiser, a deep cockpit (so not self draining), with comfortable laidback seats down the sides, retractable keel containing its lead ballast (no bulb) so it’s removable, and roller furling/reefing vertical batten main and jib on unstayed masts. It’s the ultimate, most elegant performance cruiser for the discerning sailing family. Even has provision for a folding dodger to protect those upfront seeking shelter going to windward in a breeze.

Here are the proposed changes we needed post Qingdao, in order of severity:

1. The gunwale rolled over like on a dinghy which provides a great all around hand hold to carry an OTB boat, but this was a 400kg keelboat which heels to 45 degrees going to windward in a breeze, the rolled over gunwale underwater was then an unnecessary drag. So the plan was to remove it, rolling the hull over the other way, 150mm towards the centre and sit the deck on top of that. This required major surgery to the hull mold and relatively minor changes to the deck.

2. A full bulkhead across the aft half of the cockpit.

3. Proper chainplates bolted to new partial bulkheads under the deck P & S.

4. Triangulated stringers and beams spanning the length of the side decks, supported on the new bulkheads. This added structure stiffened the foredeck.

5. Modify the cowling, projecting it forward to better incorporate the spinnaker sock, smooth the edges of the throat, and replace the 29er forestay tang, spinn pole guide with a custom fitting buried in the forward tip of the fibreglass cowling. The SKUD after all is a 20ft keelboat, not a 14ft OTB skiff.

6. Following that lead we needed to replace the extended 29er aluminium mast with a custom made spar that would stand up straight going downwind under spinnaker in strong wind. One of the design parameters for the 29er rig was it packed up nicely into a 2.2m long bundle and great as hand luggage on flights, and poke out the taxi window on arrival. That’s was not a SKUD priority. What was needed was a 2 piece mast to fit in a 20ft container.

The adaptation of the 29er spar for the SKUD required a 700mm longer lower mast section, with the mast then being stepped on top of the cowling to give extra height. The 29er asymmetric spinnaker is 12 sqm, compared to the SKUD at 18 sqm. So we had a major under design problem as the extended 29er mast would develop an “S” bend under compression going downwind.

You could control that by pulling hard on the boom vang and sheeting in the mainsail so the Mylar sail and its battens locked the mains luff curve into the mast. But beware, if you un-cleated the main or let go the vang the mast might collapse.

We fixed that with a Selden full carbon filament wound mast. If we did it again it would have been stepped on the cockpit floor instead of up on the cowling which would have made it easier to step and man handle. Would have also got the mast from Killwell in NZ as that would have been much cheaper. The Selden mast is filament wound on a machine that can wind mainmasts for 150ft super mega yachts, so it’s production equipment is over the top.

7. The 29er spinnaker pole, or prod as these bowsprit like extensions are nicknamed was designed to handle a 12 sqm asymmetrical kite. Obviously  with 18 sqm of kite strung between the upper mast and the prod as the hull skates along, bursting through waves in big gusty winds, that prod is under excessive load. If the prod is curving up and over to leeward the spinnaker is all out of shape, made worse by the under designed mast bending forward under load.

8. Removable rudder blades in fixed rudder boxes with stub tillers were needed as the fixed aluminium 29er extrusions were a gross nuisance to fit, and tillers were needed to facilitate the full range of steering options.

9. A new cast aluminium ballast bulb mold was produced to create identical symmetrical bulbs with deeper cavity for the new keel.

10. The modified keel was extend to insert deeper into the bulb to take a pair of 12mm horizontal pins to positively attach bulb to keel. It was also extended at the top to incorporate a positive lock down system.

11. Horizon Sailmakers redesigned the sails to suit the new mast, using contender laminated Mylar film with blue reinforcing, so the new see through sails were blue.  

12. To ensure the hull could never sink, we increased the styrene foam buoyancy volume to 150 litres in the bow, and 150 litres under both side decks aft. That’s 450 litres plus 150 litres of PVC foam laminated into the foam sandwich hull and deck meant 600 litres of positive buoyancy, equivalent to the sailing weight of the boat at 400kg, plus 200kg for its 2 crew.

Even if the hull was holed and punctured in numerous places allowing all trapped air to escape, and with 1/3 of the styrene under each side deck right aft, the SKUD would never drown its strapped in crew. That’s as long as the keel was locked down, and the lead ballast didn’t fall off, a near impossibility considering how it was now all attached.

You put a spinnaker on a small sailboat and you guarantee that it will get knocked down with the mast near horizontal, or underwater depending on various parameters. That’s why the SKUD is the benchmark in safety and performance.

We also manufactured a new fibreglass handstand trolley which supported the bulb, and allowed access to undo the screws and knock out the 2 keel pins so the board could be removed. To move boats around between events we built a double decker SKUD trailer which took an hour to load but looked really swish with going down the highway. If we left the board in the upper hull we were 4.2m and just cleared under highway bridges. But I’m not a gambler so always removed both boards.

***

The 2009 Sail Sydney International Regatta in November, followed by Sail Melbourne, then the Australian Hansa Classes National Championships would provide the first opportunity to test all these changes. We weren’t looking for more speed, but would be very disappointed if the Mkll boats were slower.

We had Nikki Birrel and Alexandra Rickham from GBR, Tim Dempsey and Pauline Chamberlain from Auckland, Australians Dan Fitzgibbon with Rachel Cox, and Ame Barnbrook with Lindsay Mason, all Paramedic contenders who would challenge each other and reveal what we had created.

With these serious MNA backed sailors come their professional coaches, so my goal was to canvas their views on the MKll. They were all sailing MKl’s, except Ame’s SKUD 044, the first MKll with Selden mast and blue Horizon sails. Tim, Pauline and coach Rob Hielkema took 044 out for a blast and came back with a broken main shroud, but had quickly gone about and miraculously avoided a dismasting. They lowered the main and sailed home under the jib alone.

The new boat was good, slightly heavier but noticeably stiffer. You could sense how the MKl strained and flexed, up and over waves as it clawed its way to windward. While the MKll was stiff and rigid, it punched its bow into those waves, driving out the other side as the stern rose up on the retreating wave, aligning the bow to attack the next wave. You could also sense the extra power of the mainsail, the stiffer mast holding the aerofoil shape in what is essentially a vertical wing.

The efficiency to windward depends on the righting moment of the lead ballast keel countering the heeling moment of the wind trying to blow it over. If the sail is too full it will develop more power, but will heel over more, spilling the wind. In strong wind a flatter sail will stand up more vertically, converting the power into lift. 

When a passenger jet comes in to land it lowers its flaps creating a boldly curved aerofoil shape which gives enormous lift for a slow landing speed. A high performance fighter jet has a nearly flat aerofoil wing for high speed. It’s the same principle on a sailboat, but instead of an onboard jet engine, a keelboat generates its power by its lead ballast keel keeping the rig as vertical as possible, presenting its wing to the moving wind.

So a sailboat is a miraculous machine, which comes alive when all its conflicting forces are brought into an illusive balance which complement each other. The MKll’s extra bulkheads, deck stringers and rolled over gunwale had stiffened the hull. The stiffer mast stabilised the shape of the wing, but there was no obvious increase in speed. It was supposed to be what we wanted, but privately it was a little disappointing. The worst outcome was we had slowed it down, as then no one would want one.

I’d independently canvassed all our experts, but towards the end of Sail Melbourne we got everyone together and asked for their views. It was very interesting but nothing stood out as a game changer, until Rob took me aside and said “Get Frank to make a new mainsail, take 2% out of the top half”. Rob was more than just Tim’s coach, as he also worked evaluating sails for Team New Zealand, the then holder of the Americas Cup. So his suggestion was to be taken very seriously.

Frank Hammond had just left so I rang and told him what Rob had said. Ok, let’s give it a go, so I went to the Horizon loft and watched as Frank brought up the SKUD main on the loft’s design software and took 2% out of the top half of the sail. The new main would be ready in 24 hours, in time for the first race of the Hansa Combined Classes National Championships to be sailed at nearby Royal Brighton Yacht Club.

Two days later, race one, the breeze was around 15 knots, it blew from seaward so we could see clearly the angle of heel as the 4 SKUDs beat to windward, heading away from us observers onshore. One boat clearly had less heel, but we couldn’t tell where it was positioned in the fleet, until they all went about onto starboard tack heading for the windward mark.

In the distance the one with less heel was shimmering blue, so it was Ame. All 4 boats were close, but Ame rounded the mark first which was confirmed by Ame’s trademark lilac spinnaker being the first to launch. Ame is named  after Amethyst, the crystal quartz gemstone which ranges in colour from lilac to deep reddish purple. It’s said to evoke feelings of serenity and calmness, it’s a symbol of peace and unification. Ame herself is indeed a Gem.

So Rob the Kiwi coach was right. The recut sail with 2% less draft in the top half had reduced the heel, which presented a more vertical wing to the wind, increasing the power and its resulting lift to windward.

Combine that extra power with the increased hull stiffness, and instead of twisting and flexing the energy was concentrated into forward motion, carving the smoothest path through and over the waves. It doesn’t take much to bring a finely tuned sailboat to life. It’s why a champion intuitive sailor can balance the numerous conflicting forces, finding a perfect harmony and sail through even an expert Olympic fleet. That’s the magic of sailing. It’s also how you know when your new creation has arrived, it speaks to you saying it’s now come to life.

 ***

But the first real trial for the SKUD MKll was the 2010 IFDS Worlds at Medemblik on the IJsselmeer (IJssel Lake), which was formed when the Zuider Zee was closed off with  dykes and drained in the later first half of the 20th century. The local government owned Medemblik Regatta Centre,  complemented by the nearby bungalow holiday village, is a great venue for big international sailing events.

As the 2010 Worlds was the first of 2 qualifiers for the 2012 London Paralympics sailed at Weymouth, our modifications would be under the microscope with every aspect of the hull and rig subject to strict measurement parameters. But at the last minute Leo our IFDS SKUD Class measurer could’t get leave from his job, so I was handed the measurement forms, jigs and a tape measure and asked to get on with the job.

That was certainly a conflict of interest as my biggest fear was our new boats wouldn’t measure. There was always the chance a particularly pedantic measurer could knock a boat or 2 out of an event causing embarrassment for the builder who had signed a compliance certificate that the boat would measure. So this was a pragmatic and expedient solution which suited everyone. As long as each boat had a signed event measurement form it could compete.

There were a few things that needed correction, but generally most control points were within their boundaries so I was able to sign off on all the boats. Gold went to Niki and Alexandra, GBR sailing a MKll. Silver was Scott Whitman and Julia Dorset, USA sailing a MKl hull with MKll rig. Bronze went to Dan and Rachel, AUS sailing SKUD 047 a MKll. So that was a good result all round, a mix of both models.

The next IFDS Worlds was at Weymouth, at what used to be the Portland Bill  naval base which was turned into the venue for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic sailing competitions. So the 2011 IFDS Worlds was the second qualifier, and a test event for the main game in 2012. The SKUD was allocated slots for 11 nations in the Paralympics, 6 of which were already through, including the host nation, so the remaining 5 would be decided at this 2011 event.

This qualifies the nation, not necessarily the team so there can be major disappointments for qualifying teams, who get brushed aside when their MNA chooses another. As usual the main players get through at the first qualifier, the outsiders battle it out for the remaining 5.

In 2011 s again Gold went to Niki Birrel and Alexandra Rickham. Silver again USA but this time Jennifer French and Jean-Paul Creignou. Bronze again AUS Dan Fitzgibbon with his new crew Liesl Tesch.

Dan had seen Liesl sailing on celebrity accountant Anthony Bell’s super maxi in the Sydney to Hobart. Liesl was a celebrity in her own right, an accomplished media performer who had 5 times won medals in the Paralympics as a team member and later captain of the Australian Women’s Wheelchair Basketball team, but a gold medal had evaded her. Liesl was a driven athlete, so Dan’s question was would she like to be his crew and Australian Sailing would coach her in the art of sailing an asymmetric powered ballasted skiff. Liesl accepted and switched sports, and they won gold medals 2012 and again in Rio 2016.

All the SKUDs racing in the 2011 Worlds and the 2012 Weymouth Paralympics were MKll’s. Jackie and I had been to Qingdao in 2008, while David Staley had to stay back at our Melbourne factory to sort out the mess created by our book keeper ripping us off. So this round it was David’s turn, but being on the IFDS Executive Committee, and a trained industrial photographer he doubled up as the IFDS photographer for the 2012 Paralympic Sailing event.

So Jackie and I didn’t go, but David was there, and our NED distributor and friend Akko Van der Veen, who helped the Brazilian Sailing Team acquire their SKUDs wound up living in the Paralympic Village and marched in Brazilian colours in the opening and closing ceremonies. Not sure if he was listed as their Bosun (official title for Boat Boy), or Non Executive Coach. It was important Brazil made it through these events as they were to host the 2016 Paralympic Sailing, so Akko’s skill set was vital. Incidentally, David Staley was appointed the Technical Delegate for the Rio Paralympic Sailing Competition.

But for all the expertise and efforts to dot the i’s and cross the t’s things will always go wrong down here in the bubble. Gene Hinkel as SKUD measurer in 2012 needed the actual measurements of the SKUD sails to mark up the measuring table, so asked David who asked Frank at Horizon. Back came some numbers which were then used as the official data for the sails. Any sails outside that wouldn’t measure, give or take a few mm as specified.

Well, the luff length that made it to Gene was 50mm too short, so every jib laid on the table didn’t measure. In the end it was decided that as all the jibs were with a couple of mm of each other they would pass a resolution allowing oversized sails to be used. But this major balls up made it into the official report on the event, which stated that Hansa was not up to scratch and wasn’t supplying class legal sails as signed off on the SKUD Compliance Certificate.

This could easily have been corrected but when you consider all the politics and manoeuvring that goes on in the background it’s kind of fun to have that black mark hanging over us. It’s a good talking point, and shows how far we have come.

But it did have consequences as when we applied to ISAF for the SKUD to become a Recognised Craft, which all our other boats are, this measurement issue came up and we were told we weren’t worthy and should get our house in order. To be eligible for recognised craft status for a 20 footer we would need to have a minimum global distribution number of craft on each continent.

Or,  as we were doing, applying due to some significant special purpose our craft met. The SKUD was used for a special purpose and facilitated the inclusion of severely disabled people. This special purpose was used successfully to have the Liberty accepted as a Recognised Craft, but the SKUD got knocked back as we failed to comply with the basic measurement commitments.

That was the argument, but ISAF at that time was reviewing the list of Recognised Craft as it was outdated and included classes that were going backwards in numbers. The RC status is meant to encourage growth, and active participation in the class’s World Championships. Being authorised to run World Championships was of course the reason for seeking RC status, without it the SKUD Worlds were run by a third party, IFDS, and were only for disabled sailors with an IFDS classification. With RC status they could race in our open fleet events.

Another significant event at the 2012 Paralympics was RYA taking the IFDS to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland, disputing the 4 point penalty they received for scrubbing the bottom of their Sonar when it was lifted from the water for rudder repairs. It was a wet regatta meaning boats stay in the water for the duration. If underwater repairs are needed it is prohibited to clean the hull while out of the water. They were told not to, but when Gene Hinkel went to check on GBR progress the boat boy was cleaning the port side of the keel.

So the Organising Committee protested and the Jury awarded GBR the penalty which ultimately cost them a bronze medal. The RYA’s appeal was thrown out, but the IFDS legal and witness costs meant possible bankruptcy, which was averted when the IPC lent World Sailing €500K to cover the bill.

If we fast forward to 2015 when the IPC dropped sailing from the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics, the official reason given was sailing had failed to comply with the IPC’s global distribution rules, but behind the scenes are other stories.

One question that has been raised is did the RYA legal action break one of the IPC’s fundamental rules, that is the Judges decision is final, so it’s been suggested that to challenge this in a court is cheating. The IPC takes a very dim view of cheats, as seen by all Intellectual Disability disciplines being excluded from future Paralympics after the Spanish ID basketball team was found to include some Able Bods at the Sydney 2000 Games.

But I imagine the IPC could have been infuriated, thoroughly pissed off with sailing on several fronts. Here’s sailing, with an image and reputation for being elitist, verified by the overly complex and expensive equipment used, which required expensive competition facilities like marinas, handstands with cranes, and a flotilla of expensive support boats, plus the logistics nightmare to import and export it all.  So sailing is an expensive sport to facilitate, a bit like jump and dressage equestrian events are seen as elitist. Sailing also failed to meet the IPC’s global distribution targets, and was selective in who was eligible as intellectually disabled sailors were not included.

Then one of the professional powerhouse sailing nations is caught doing what they were told not to do, cheating essentially, but instead of taking their medicine and apologising, they arrogantly challenge the IPC rules and officials in court. The final insult was IPC having to stump up €500K for legal costs as sailing was broke. With that charge sheet it not surprising sailing was given the boot.

As for the official reason given, we believe that if our Liberty had been selected instead of our SKUD, we would have got the boat into active competition in 50 countries and sailing would have achieved the global distribution targets. What very few know, but is hugely significant is the list of nations and participation numbers in our global Hansa events were used by IFDS to pad out their classified disabled sailor numbers.

Each quadrennial cycle the Paralympic sports have to show the IPC that they have the spread and numbers to maintain their prestigious status as a Paralympic sport. With our numbers and nations included, the IFDS had the data to satisfy the IPC.

Interestingly, we weren’t asked by IFDS to contribute our data in the years following the 2012 Paralympics which is possibly why sailing fell below the targets. Or, of equal interest, did  someone decide to exclude our data because our events weren’t exclusively for classified IFDS disabled sailors.

If the later is the case, then I’d say that if the Liberty had been selected instead of the elitist SKUD our programs would have brought all those new Liberty sailors onto the IFDS classification register, and we would all be living in a different world today — 2023, sailing excluded from LA 2028, next opportunity Brisbane 2032.

***

Following on from the debacle of our SKUD jibs failing measurement in 2012, we decided to add a new SKUD sailmaker to our arsenal and approached Hyde, a GBR sailmaker who had a loft in Cebu in the Philippines. Hyde were already producing training sails and covers for our little boats in the UK, so we arranged a meeting on one of my visits.

We shipped an old Horizon main, jib and spinnaker, along with a measuring template to Cebu, and asked them to recreate the 3 sails on their own design program. When ready we had the sails sent to the UK for testing as that’s where their designer was based, and the GBR team of Nicki and Alexandra had 2 boats that could be used, one rigged with Horizon the other with the new Hyde sails. Akko came across from NED to coordinate the trials and loaded with me.

The results were quite disturbing as there was nothing special about the main and jib, they certainly weren’t noticeably faster, but the asymmetric spinnaker was very full, a downwind sail and not the compromise needed for tacking downwind, but also capable of reaching. A sail too full generates too much power in a big breeze so will knock you over on a reach.

The 2016 Paralympics was in Rio de Janeiro, so the Brazilian’s had ordered 3 boats which they wanted ASAP. But we couldn’t ship them without sails and had presumed Hyde would know what they were doing, but it appeared they weren’t that good at creating what we needed. We were already into 2014 and under pressure.

It emerged that Hyde hadn’t redesigned the sails but took apart Horizon’s and digitised each panel instead of creating a 3D model that could be tweaked and and adjusted to reach perfection. So I rang Frank and agreed to buy the original ProSail design for A$5K which he would email to Mike Hyde’s designer in the UK. This set Hyde up with cut files that would be the same as Horizon, but better as Hyde were more consistent, whereas Horizon sails wouldn’t all measure.

These clear Mylar film sails are rigid, the laser cut panels taped together with double sided tape with exactly 10mm overlap. Each panel was curved so the 3D shape was an aerodynamic wing, it’s maximum cord depth about 30% aft of the mast. The sail was designed to fit exactly to the curve of the mast in different winds. But if you weren’t vigilant in taping the panels together before stitching, there could be a ridge, a flat spot or a bulge in the sail which would be rejected by a diligent coach. I remember Adrian Finglas the AUS SKUD coach for a while inspecting some new Horizon jibs. Three of us each holding tight on the 3 cornered sail searching for one with perfect seams. When identified it would be marked, tested then put aside for future regattas. You had to get your house in order if your building sailboats for this level of competition.

We managed to get the first 3 suits of Hyde SKUD sails made and shipped to Batam just in time to catch the container going to Rio. If we’d missed it it would be a disaster as  importing anything into Brazil is a nightmare with enormous duty, so everything needed had to be inside that container destined to the Paralympics as it was protected and had special prearranged customs clearance. Akko would be there to unpack and assemble the boats to ensure our part of the bargain went well, because the shenanigans and intrigues the Brazilian’s would conjure would ensure their program was constantly on the verge of going pear shaped.

So we had successfully introduced a new sailmaker, but Hyde were using standard round rod vinyl ester battens, and not the tapered flat profile battens Permex (manufacturer of “Blue Streak” brand battens) had developed for the  SKUD for Horizon. These rods were overly stiff and weren’t easy to pop, but were also damaging the plastic bolt rope track on the mast. So I applied to the IFDS committee to change the specifications of the battens used in Hyde sails.

It was necessary to get permission as the SKUD Class Management Committee had passed a crazy resolution that battens would be sailmaker specific, that is Horizon had to use Permex battens and Hyde round rods. I’d argued vehemently against this as battens should be left open for development in these early days and we would identify the best and provide all the Paralympic teams with identical battens closer to the competition.

But I wasn’t pushy enough and Alexandra had her way as she had been the one insisting on the battens being sailmaker specific. And then it dawned on me what had happened here. GBR would buy from us only Horizon sails. One order was 8 mains and jibs. They alone knew the significance of the battens as they had the inside running having been involved in those trials. If it was locked in that Hyde used round rods, then GBR could focus their campaign around Horizon’s better battens.

Maybe I’ve imagined the whole thing, but that’s what it looked like if you joined the dots, it explained why GBR had no interest in Hyde sails while most other teams did. You just needed to buy plenty of Horizon sails and put aside the best and the odds were in your favour.

The second qualifier for Rio was at Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, or “Royals” as it’s known, at Williamstown in the western corner of Port Phillip Bay, that huge bay which our back gate opened onto when I was a little kid. So this was home to me, and it was at Royals that we first craned the SKUD prototype into the water for its first sail.

I’d got permission from the IFDS to change the specs of the battens, instead of rods which were damaging the mast track we could now use Permex battens which were specifically shaped to perform with Horizon’s cut files, which Hyde were also now using. So this was a perfectly logical and sensible step to be taking. Dan Fitzgibbon heard about the change and ordered a new Hyde sail suit with Permex battens. I’d been too busy doing other things as we were fitting hoists to the pontoons and a host of things, so didn’t give the battens another thought.

We had a lot of boats to be measured so I’d supplied new jigs and tools which would make their way to Rio in an AUS container. Just about every boat had minor sail repair or measurement issues, both Horizon and some Hyde, but luckily there was a local sailmaker who had set up a sewing machine in a neighbouring warehouse. So there was a constant conga line of crews carrying sails back and forth. We picked up the bill.

I’d arrived at the venue with Dan’s new sails and a stock of Permex battens and fittings if anyone needed them. Measuring was underway and it didn’t take long for word to get out that Dan had a new Hyde main with Permex battens. The GBR coach was most agitated and couldn’t believe this was above board, he zeroed in on how come Dan knew about this but GBR didn’t. Next we see a notice posted on the event notice board that a SKUD meeting was called for 11.00 next day to hammer out this travesty. All were invited.

Next morning David Staley was making his way across the bay from Royal Brighton Yacht Club where he was the Sailing Manager, but his RIB broke down and couldn’t make it. I looked around for support, saw Akko over at the Singapore SKUD where he was helping for this event, but he smiled and waved obviously too busy. This was obviously going to be a nasty heavy duty grilling I’d have to weather on my own.

The club’s general bar was set aside for the meeting, a couple of tables across the room deep inside faced by all the chairs with standing room spreading out onto the open air dining area. As the place filled up with sailors, coaches and officials Russel Phillips the International Hansa Class President rolled his wheelchair in behind the officials tables, and I was signalled to take my place over to the side of the room, almost out of sight . I sat alongside Shauna Phillips Russel’s wife and fellow Class office holder.

The meeting was called to order and got under way with a furious GBR coach outlining the travesty that had occurred and questioned who had authorised this and demanded it be reversed. Russel sat calmly and outlined the process, how it was legitimate, the manufacturer (me) had taken the appropriate steps to prevent more damage being done to these expensive masts. The only error was the Class Association should have communicated the change in specifications earlier and took full responsibility and apologised.

Dan Fitzgibbon sat there smiling, alongside Liesl and the Australian Team, knowing a serious blow had been landed on their number one sparring partner. Nikki had appeared on the scene in a blaze of controversy we can assume cooked up and managed by the RYA. That assumption is based on the legalese letter the IFDS received warning the RYA would leap into action if the IFDS moved to outlaw Nikki’s 100% control of the boat while Alexandra was the tactician navigator seated in the rear. Although this arrangement was against the spirit of the new discipline, the SKUD Class Management Committee had given an assurance in late 2007 that the class rules were locked down with no more changes leading into the 2008 Games.

It looks like the RYA is a tough customer, quite a mercenary outfit which happens when you offer monetary and honorific rewards to sailors and coaches for medal achievements. It’s like offering company CEO’s share options if they can raise the share price. Australia’s the same, but the RYA throws up the most examples. There’s Nikki sailing close to the wind, then the CAS legal action bankrupting the IFDS, then this SKUD batten issue. It’s sad to see these GBR sailors caught up in these controversies, but it wouldn’t happen if the MNA hadn’t been in support.

Dan and Liesl went on to win that Worlds and the Gold medal in Rio. Dan was the best sailor, and Liesl had quickly become the best crew. Williamstown was the end of the road for GBR’s quest for a gold medal. Dan knew the GBR team wouldn’t recover their mojo after being stung by the batten debacle. At Rio it was AUS Gold. CAN Silver. GBR Bronze. Overall across the 3 Paralympic classes Australia was 2 gold and 1 silver. FRA 1 gold (2.4 class). CAN 1 silver, 1 bronze. USA 1 silver. GBR 2 bronze. Maybe those results recommend a change in culture at the RYA high performance department.

***

Rio was also the end of the road for sailing in the Paralympics it being excused from the Tokyo 2020 Games. As described above he official reason was sailing’s poor global penetration and distribution. In hindsight the opportunity to change that trajectory was the 2005 application for a 3rd Paralympic sailing discipline. We had been the main drivers lobbying for a new class more inclusive of severely disabled people. We developed the Liberty for the job.

Our commercial competitor the M16 from Canada was also a single person craft, but being triple the price of a Liberty they chose to convert the 16 into a 2P. So the IFDS presented the IPC with 3 options. A new single person, a 2 person, or both new disciplines. There was already the SP 2.4, the 3P Sonar, so the IPC went with the 2P option.

To cover for this outcome we had l ready begun developing our SKUD 18, the ultimate in safety and performance, but that requires deep draft, high tech construction and complex performance equipment. It was the best boat to beat the M16 but not the best boat for the job. To save sailing the mediocre M16 could have been better, the best was the Liberty it being the safest, most efficient, affordable Universal Design sailboat on the planet and still is. It’s the boat that would have delivered the global distribution numbers the IPC wanted to see.

In 2023 the leading boats that are contenders for elite international sailing are mediocre when compared to the SKUD. They are really just lake boats, they cant handle a 30 knot storm front, let alone 50 knots in open water without a safety boat nearby. Which signals what sailing has become, and in its way what it deserves, in common with much human activity on the planet today it’s degenerated into mediocrity. The SKUD is not mediocre, it’s exceptional, but it’s  elitist which makes it unsuitable to achieve the IPC goals, while the Liberty is in a class of its own, it ticks all the boxes as a magnificent UD machine.

The other reasons behind the IPC decision to exclude sailing will be in dispute and swept under the carpet as is the usual way uncomfortable information is handled. So no need to mention again the RYA challenging the IPC rules. Or the IPC bail out to save World Sailing from bankruptcy, caused by by sailing’s financial reliance on the Olympics, exposed when Tokyo 2020 was to delayed to 2021 due to Covid. Plus the costs to defend the RYA CAS legal challenge. Beside those causes for concern, the failure of sailing to include intellectually disabled sailors pales into insignificance.

***

There is always the possibility that an Olympic and Paralympic Organising Committee could intervene and request a sport be included in their games, but in this case sailing is not a hugely popular sport in Japan, so you wouldn’t expect the Tokyo Organising Committee (TOC) to burn political capital to have sailing reinstated.

But still we thought it was worth a try. The first problem was there were no active SKUDs in Japan so funding was quickly arranged for 2 boats to be shipped from Nowra to Hiroshima. If we could get JASF to plead with the TOC they could hassle the IPC to put aside their grievance and reinstate sailing. But in the end, despite our very successful Sailability programme in Japan which was a favourite with politicians, those 2 SKUDs sat embarrassingly idle on Hiroshima hard stand so 3 years later we shipped them back to Australia.

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