To bimble or not to bimble…….that is the question!

So what is bimbling?

I couldn’t find a definition in my 120,000 word dictionary (4 inches thick) so in a nutshell:

To bimble:

“Time spent tinkering (often pointlessly) with your boat when on the shore, when you should be out sailing”.

However, a well bimbled and prepared boat whilst simple, works well and efficiently and doesn’t break.  Bimbling also runs hand in hand with maintaining your kit to keep it running like velvet.  Also, if you’ve excelled the boat can look cool while adding that personal touch.  (if only people would bimble their trailers so they all looked different when you first back to the beach!).

To ensure we spend the maximum amount of time sailing our very awesome machines, we need to try and avoid time wasting bimbles.  We’ve all done it, you know, the five minute job that you though would be good and was actually crap.  Also you didn’t have the right tools and now you’ve wasted a perfectly good sailing day because of your complete ineptness (and yes it was sunny, hot and 20 knots).  Any handling issue you were trying to cure could have been more than overcome with the days practice you’ve just missed! 

This was nicely summarised for me in a quote that Richard Stenhouse gave on the subject of wire-to-wire tacking :

“On the subject of nun-chuckers, they add weight, windage, all for ease of boat handling which could have been acquired in the time it took you to make them!”    

So that’s a quick intro.  Luckily for Musto skiff sailors, our pockets don’t have to be so deep when compared to other high performance sailboats.    That’s because we can’t change the four main parameters which may are most likely to change performance.  These are the hull, the mast, foils and sails.  This means that we can do very little to enhance the performance of our boats because the principle hardware is one design.  We are not as skint as sailors from classes such as the finn or international 14 who are forced to spend big bucks on the principle hardware which soon becomes obsolete.  Therefore, we can spend our cash on doing events and having fun. Great!.  These parameters essentially form the one-design principle for the class.

Unfortunately for most of us, that leaves us with little excuse to justify poor performance except ourselves and the way we are using our principal hardware.  

The class has adopted an open mind now that the fleet is establishing and the rules are currently being tightened and reworded to accommodate all but a few bimbles that have been seen so far, so that all boats racing are in class, as currently most are not under the current rules. In the recent sailor survey, 92.3% of cats prefer whiskers…. I mean were in favour of developing the class rules in a permissive fashion.  The biggest, but still relatively insignificant gripes were concerning the filling of the rudder plate bolt holes and the tie-down of the clew (laser style).  The first of these jobs is a pain in the back side due to the very thin gel coat layer adjacent the holes.  It is very hard to get a neat and seamless job.  If the bolts need replacing then it’s a fag to chip the filler out and start again. 

You could argue that such modifications could improve the performance of the boat in a handicap fleet and we want to maximise this with the current PY static.  However, with such a small number of PY returns to the RYA (3 I think), it will be a good time before the handicap number settles rests at a level which reflects the speed of the boats and the skills of the sailors.  This line then seems a little irrelevant.   

Why should we be allowed to bimble?

We all like our boats set up a bit differently to accommodate our sailing styles, ability and physical attributes as well as our preferred colour schemes. Also it may be difficult worldwide to get identical ropes and fittings.

So what are the most popular bimbles?

Popular additions to many boats have been the addition of hertzog trapeze lines to provide a coarse adjustment to trapeze height, alternative stiffer tiller extensions in lieu of the supplied fibreglass extension that steer rather than bend such as the rooster or C2.  Many boats are now sporting sta-master adjusters in the lower for more accurate control of the lower shrouds.  Footloops are certainly one of my personal favourites, opting for a toe-only fit using pipe and string.  This is simple and light but many boats have windsurf-style straps.  Many of the lighter and less physical sailors have adapted their cunningham to have a 6:1 purchase instead of the 4:1 supplied.  These are some of the common bimbles but there are many using various lengths of shockcord to do seemingly random things or adding un-required complication. These are best observed by a quick walk round at any open meeting.  Many of these bimbles and more can be seen on the website at in a very useful article from Ian Renilson called “MPS owner mods”.  Well worth a look.

In conclusion, bimble but keep some perspective.  I reckon that a simple layout is good.  You’ve all heard of the KISS approach. However, making sure your boat is sorted will inevitably result in less equipment hassles or breakages which should make the whole sailing experience more pleasurable.  The standard production boat is pretty sorted as a good start point and with the addition of footstraps, you are away.  Once you know your boat won’t break then time is best spent on the water practicing rather than bimbling, which will lead to far greater reward.  We can’t change the things that would actually affect boat speed so most of the above and others are just personal preferences.  The only area of the boat that needs sorting is the removal of the play that appears after the rudder fittings wear and Ovington Boats are currently looking into an effective and viable alternative.  Watch this space!

So what happens from here?

Any potential improvements that may come to light in the future, Ovington Boats and Ovington are always willing to listen and advise as appropriate in an open-house fashion. This is a great attitude. Ovington Boats always intended the Musto Skiff to be a class run by the sailors rather than a strict manufacturers one design and the rationale has been such that this just about where we are.  A new class will always take time to settle both in terms of rules and sailor attitudes.  A positive step has been taken to change the class rules to reflect the current trends to maintain the one design principle  while not ruling out any future developments in systems, components or materials.  Ovington Boats and Joachim have ‘let their baby go’ and its fate is in our hands.

And finally, when questioned concerning any items that should be allowed?, Stenhouse answered:

I don’t like the 49ers being faster, we need a No. 1 rig and a mast-head kite”. Luckily, he’s not in control (apart from on the water doing the triple this year) so we can sleep-easy that the class will remain an affordable and fun boat to campaign at a competitive level – and that’s a very rare thing.

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