Sailing Magazine
pic by Tim Ludvigsen/Sail-World
by Richard Crockett
In about mid-January I wrote about Andrew Tarboton winning the Musto Skiff worlds down under.
So it’s a great pleasure to again write about another unsung hero of our dinghy sailing fleets; this time Graeme Willcox who went to Pensacola in the USA and won the Contender Worlds. He of course cut his sailing teeth on the Highveld, and sailing venues around our country.
Willcox has always been a front-runner in just about every dinghy class he’s competed in, and, like Tarboton, he too has put in the hard yards on the water and in boat preparation to become a very deserving World Champion. One simply does not win a world title without a great deal of preparation and effort, so well done to him on this outstanding achievement.
His six-race scorecard was pretty impressive with all races being fourth and better – with his discard being a fourth. Pretty darn good that!
One cannot compare Tarboton and Willcox as sailors, as they are simply poles apart in personality, approach and execution of their sailing skills, yet both have over many years made sacrifices to be where they are today. The biggest plus factor for both is that they have based themselves in the UK and both sail “hot’ singlehanded dinghies. In the UK they have been able to choose from a wide range of “hot” dinghies, and test their skills against the very best in the world.
It’s very sad that our local sailors are not exposed to the choices these guys have, while locally one has the impression that our young sailors plug away on very old designs which are anything but “hot”. Let’s not take away from the fact that some individuals have attempted to introduce “hot” boats locally, but a combination of factors have precluded them from being established as classes with a good number of boats. Sad but true.
Of interest is the fact that the Contender dinghy was sailed, quite competitively, in this country in the 1970s, so I wonder whether memories of these boats may have made an impression when he was in his beginner days of sailing?
So what is a Contender one may ask? It’s a singlehanded high-performance dinghy which was designed by Bob Miller, who changed his name to Ben Lexcen, and who became famous for designing the Australia America’s Cup boat ‘Australia II’. He designed the Contender in 1967 as a possible successor to the Finn dinghy.
Some have labelled the Contender as the sexiest singlehanded dinghy in the world!
While not winning the sexiest man in the world title, Graeme Willcox did the next best thing, by winning the Contender dinghy World Champions title. Who would want anything else?
