Heron Nationals Round Up

The Heron Nationals are completed and the results are all in.


We sailed well, particularly considering the foreign conditions, and finished 19th out of 58 boats. I had set myself the target of finishing in place 19 or better, so we just scraped in.

I normally sail at Dobroyd where the water is flat, there is no swell and little or no passing traffic. Largs Bay has a significant swell and plenty of chop – so this made the conditions quite different to my normal experience.  These are also conditions that my boat is not particularly suited to.

The Heron class is essential One Design class. In a One Design class all the boats are meant to conform to a strict set of design rules which are meant to ensure that the boats are identical. In the Optimist Class (the dinghy that my eldest daughter races) all the boats come from only a hand full of moulds and can only use a handful of masts, booms and other parts. This means that all the boats are almost identical.

The Heron class however was originally established for home boat builders and so has a little bit of room in the specifications to allow for a margin of error. This has resulted in boats with slightly different performance characteristics being built from plywood. When manufacturing boats using fibreglass became cost effective a mould was produced in Australia for the Heron class to use.

The first mould was used for some time. The boats that were made with this mould are referred to as ‘Mark 1’ hulls. This is what I have. Sometime after this mould was made, a boat by the name of Hornet was built from plywood and was seen as a very successful (fast) boat. Due to it’s success, another mould was made using it’s hull.

Hornet had received some damage prior to being used for this, and the mould that was made resulted in boats that were nearly identical in shape to Hornet, including the uneven surface where the repair had been done. Boats made using this hull are referred to as ‘Mark 2’ hulls.

In the last 12 months another new mould has been made. This one is based on the old ‘Mark 2’ mould and it was only intended that to clean up the uneven surface mentioned above and to tidy up a few other similar items. The few boats that have been built using this mould are still referred to as ‘Mark 2’ hulls, but generally with the explanation that they are from the new mould. In addition to being a bit more ‘fair’ (that means nice and smooth) these boats are made using modern materials and techniques making the stiffer. The stiffer the hull is the better. A boat that has a soft hull will perform slower than a boat with a stiff hull.

I don’t believe any of the new boats competed in the Heron Nationals, however the breakdown of the top 20 places goes as follows:

• Places 1-16 were made up of 14 ‘Mark 2’ hulls and 2 plywood hulls
• Places 17-19 were ‘Mark 1’ hulls
• Place 20 was a plywood hull

So I am very pleased to have finished 19th, and except for a silly capsize, would have finished 17th!

With regard to our tent relocation, we got up early and half pulled down our tent so that we could move it. We didn’t need to pull the tent down completely as we had a number of helpers. This meant that we could pick up the tent and move it whilst it was partially set up – saving a lot of time. It did look funny though and brought new meaning to a mobile home.

Our next Heron regatta is the NSW State Championship at Toukley.