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GP14 (dinghy)
Encyclopedia
Dinghy sailing
Dinghy sailing is the activity of sailing small boats by using five essential controls:* the sails* the foils ....
, with over 14,000 built.
The class is active in the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and parts of north-eastern USA, and the GP 14 can be used for both racing and cruising. The boat is relatively heavy, but stable, and the weight and the freeboard together with her lines combine to make her an excellent sea boat. She is also an ideal boat to learn to sail in.
The class is raced competitively, and offers excellent close racing; she is a very forgiving and easy boat to sail, but a very challenging and demanding and immensely rewarding boat to sail really well. At the highest level of competition the standard is world class, and it is not unusual to find reigning or past Olympic Champions entering the major GP14 Championships, and being defeated.
Design
The GP14 was designed by Jack HoltJack Holt (dinghy designer)
Jack Holt, OBE was a prolific designer of sailing dinghies. His pioneering designs of dingies using plywood did much to popularise the sport of sailing in the period immediately following World War II....
in 1949. The idea behind the design was to build a General Purpose (GP) 14-foot dinghy which could be cruised, raced or rowed, capable of also being powered effectively by a small outboard motor, able to be towed behind a small family car and able to be launched and recovered reasonably easily, and stable enough to be able to lie to moorings or anchor when required.
The boat was initially designed with a main and small jib as a comfortable family dinghy. In a design philosophy that is both practical and highly redolent of social attitudes of the day the intention was that she should accommodate a family comprising parents plus two children, and specifically that the jib should be modest enough for "Mum" or older children to handle, while she should perform well enough to give "Dad" some excitement when not taking the family out. While this rig is still available, and can be useful when using the boat to teach sailing, or for family sailing, and has some popularity for cruising, the boat is more commonly seen with the full modern rig of a mainsail, genoa and spinnaker. Australian boats also routinely use trapezes.
It seems almost by accident, and yet it is a splendid testimony to her designer, that what was originally conceived on such a broad-based brief has also turned out to be an outstanding racing dinghy, offering close and rewarding competition at the very highest level.
In the early 1990s a new internal layout was introduced in the wooden boats (the "Series 2"), with built-in underfloor buoyancy. Also in the late eighties and early nineties underfloor buoyancy was introduced to the foam-reinforced plastic (FRP) boats, and the internal layout of these boats underwent several stages of modernisation.
This was further modified over the following years, led by boat builders Alistair Duffin, who builds in wood, and Holt Allen (later Speed Sails Ltd and now Winder Boats), who manufacture in GRP (glass-reinforced plastic
Glass-reinforced plastic
Fiberglass , is a fiber reinforced polymer made of a plastic matrix reinforced by fine fibers of glass. It is also known as GFK ....
) and FRP. As of the 2011 RYA Dinghy Show a new builder in FRP, Boon Boats, has entered the market with a significantly different interior layout, developed in agreement with the Class Association. The majority of wooden boats in recent years have been built by Alistair Duffin, but a highly respected past wooden boat builder of the class, Tim Harper, who built his last one in 2006, is actively considering returning to building them. A few boats are still amateur built, and one amateur-built boat won the National Championship in both 2002 and 2005 (and is still regularly winning in top flight competition), while another amateur-built boat came second in the 2006 World Championship. Racing honours are evenly divided between the wooden and the plastic boats. New boats are currently available in wood, GRP and FRP.
All the features of the boat which can affect sailing performance are strictly one-design and are tightly controlled as such; underwater hull shape and dimensions, rig, sailplan and maximum sail dimensions (although smaller sails are always permitted), and minimum sailing weight. Thus an older boat should not be outclassed just because of her age, and there have been two examples (in 1959 and 1970) of seriously old boats winning the National Championships. Interior design has evolved over the lifetime of the class, now in excess of 60 years, and there are now a number of options in interior design and fittings.
People often wonder why the class symbol is a bell. One suspects that it relates (strictly unofficially) to the original manufacturer, Bell Woodworking. However this was not politically acceptable, since it was seen as advertising, and in the inaugural meeting of what was to become the Class Association there was much discussion as to whether the new class should be called the Bell Class or the GP14 Class; the vote was close, but in the end the name GP14 was chosen. However what may have been an inspired compromise was found for the insigna; the first boat of the class was launched in Aberdyfi
Aberdyfi
Aberdyfi , or Aberdovey is a village on the north side of the estuary of the River Dyfi in Gwynedd, on the west coast of Wales....
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, and the class was taken up by the local club, then the Dovey Sailing Club (now Dovey Yacht Club), so the official explanation was (and still is) that it is a reference to the legendary bells of Aberdovey, Cantre'r Gwaelod, and it is just coincidence that the early boats happened to be built by Bell Woodworking.
The boat's designer, Jack Holt
Jack Holt (dinghy designer)
Jack Holt, OBE was a prolific designer of sailing dinghies. His pioneering designs of dingies using plywood did much to popularise the sport of sailing in the period immediately following World War II....
, had a long association with Bell Woodworking of Leicester, because they built and sold kits for many of his other designs, such as the Cadet Dinghy
Cadet (dinghy)
The Cadet is a junior trainer sailing dinghy designed by Jack Holt, in 1947, who was commissioned to design it by Yachting World-magazine.-Background:The boat is crewed by two people and sails with a bermuda rigged mainsail, jib and spinnaker...
, Heron Dinghy
Heron (dinghy)
The Heron Dinghy is a dinghy designed by Jack Holt of the United Kingdom as the Yachting World Cartopper . The Heron dinghy was designed to be built by a home handyman out of marine ply over a timber frame, but can now also be constructed from marine ply using a stitch and glue technique or from...
, Solo Dinghy
Solo (dinghy)
The National Solo class is a racing dinghy designed by Jack Holt in 1956. The Solo is sailed in the United Kingdom, Holland and Australia.Originally designed in wood, competitive boats are now widely available in Fibre Reinforced Plastic or composite construction as well as wood.2006 was the 50th...
, Mirror Dinghy
Mirror (dinghy)
The Mirror is a very popular sailing dinghy, with more than 70,000 built.The Mirror was named after the Daily Mirror, a UK newspaper with a largely working class distribution. The Mirror was from the start promoted as an affordable boat, and as a design it has done a great deal to make dinghy...
, Miracle Dinghy
Miracle (dinghy)
The Miracle is a small dinghy sailboat popularized in the United Kingdom, and designed by Jack Holt — one of the last for the well-known designer...
, and Mirador cruising yacht, while they also produced the Pegasus dinghy (designed by Uffa Fox
Uffa Fox
Uffa Fox CBE was an English boat designer and sailing enthusiast.-Life:Uffa Fox was born on the Isle of Wight and was raised in East Cowes. He lived for a while in Puckaster on the Isle of Wight.-Work:...
) and the Osprey Dinghy and the Bell Seagull and Seamew
Bell Seagull and Seamew
The Bell Woodworking Seagull and Seamew are both small sloop-rigged marine ply sailing boats of the Trailer yacht type designed by Ian Proctor, who was also responsible for the design of many small sailing dinghies in seven different classes including the extremely popular Topper, and Wanderer.The...
cruisers (designed by Ian Proctor
Ian Proctor
Ian Douglas Ben Proctor, FRSA, known as Ian Proctor, was a prolific designer of both sailing dinghies and cruisers...
) and several other designs.
Racing
Of the three most recent GP14 World Championships, those held at Sligo Yacht ClubSligo Yacht Club
The Sligo Yacht Club is located at Rosses Point, County Sligo, Republic of Ireland. It has been located at its present site since 1973, and was redeveloped in preparation for the 2006 GP14 World Championships. The event, which was won by Ian Dobson & Andy Tunnicliffe , was run successfully in the...
, Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, in July/August 2006, and at Abersoch
Abersoch
Abersoch is a large village in the community of Llanengan in Gwynedd, Wales. It is a popular coastal seaside resort with approximately 1,000 inhabitants, on the east-facing south coast of the Llŷn Peninsula at the southern terminus of the A499. It is about south-west of Pwllheli and south-west of...
, UK in August 2008, each attracted entries of over 110 boats, while that in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
(February 2011) attracted 38 boats from UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, Scandinavia (I think), and Sri Lanka. Although numbers were lower in Sri Lanka they are still highly creditable, given that a very high proportion of the competitors had to travel half way round the world in order to get there and also ship their boats out there.
Each year the UK has a National Championship and a number of regional Championships, plus an Inland Championship and a Youth Championship, plus a considerable number of Open Meetings, and a Grand Prix awarded on the basis of points gained in a specified number of qualifying events from this list. There are also a number of clubs with thriving GP14 racing fleets, and the Class Association offers advanced race coaching to club members, plus an annual intensive week's Youth Racing Course immediately prior to the Youth Championship; a significant number of graduates from this youth course later go on to win major Championships as young adults.
Other countries, very notably including Ireland (almost the second home of the class), likewise have a well-developed pattern of racing covering the spectrum from club racing right up to world class competition.
Cruising
A number of owners cruise the boats, in some cases as well as racing them and in other cases in preference to racing, and cruises have ranged from the gentlest day sailing to such ambitious undertakings as crossings of the English Channel and the Irish Sea, and a circumnavigation of the Isle of Mull. Indeed in 1959 one intrepid owner sailed single-handed from Southend to Calais, and followed this in 1962 with a trip from Dover to Ostend. In the very early days of the class, when people used to a more traditional type of dinghy dubbed this new creation the "floating coffin", Roger Seal conclusively demonstrated her seaworthiness by sailing from Cardiff to New Quay, Wales, via St. David's Head.A possible sponsored fleet sail from Liverpool to the Isle of Man in aid of the charity Sail4Cancer is currently at the planning stage for August 2011.
Very occasional cruising owners camp aboard, although it has to be admitted that space for this is more than a little restricted.
Most serious cruising boats, even if only day-cruising, set dedicated cruising sails; these are constructed differently from racing sails and from heavier but more supple cloth, and are nearly always equipped with a means of reefing. The original design, with the small jib, provided for square gooseneck roller reefing for the main; modern boats usually prefer slab/jiffy reefing for the main, and some set fully reefable genoas by means of a headsail reefing drum and associated equipment (including a reefing spar).
An active Class Association supports both racing and cruising activities.