The Yachts and Yachting Keelboat Review

This month's Y&Y fell through the letterbox this morning. Last month they published the Dinghy Review and the Dinghy Championship Table. In DM, we had a look how the Flying Fifteen fitted into the Top 20 Championship League Table. The answer was of course, that the FF showed up pretty well.

This month they have published the keelboat review, and a Championship Table for the Top 10 Classes of Keelboat. So how did the Fifteen do this time?? Not bad is the answer....

For devilment I assume, they have included the one metre radio control model yacht, but lets leave that out. This is what I see:-

- the average fleet in the top 10 classes was 47.4 entries and this is boosted a little by inclusion of the model yachts who had 70. The FFs had 64.

- the FF came third in the league table. Ahead of the Flying Fifteen came the amazing XOD of Cowes - coming to its 100th anniversary, Hurrah!. We once in 2002 achieved the same championship turnout as the XOD, otherwise it is in a Class of their own. I'm not even sure they build new ones often any more. Amazing...

- then another excellent result ahead of the Fifteens is the Squib. They make a big deal of their 100+ turnout in 2009, and actually they do a great turn out at their Nationals. But more on the Squib in a moment...

- then in 3rd is the Fifteen, ahead of the much vaunted SB3 in 4th, then interestingly the RS Elite in 5th. The K6 is in 10th by the way, and has flat turnout for the last 5 years. So the K6 is cooked.

- the Flying Fifteen had the biggest increase in its Championship turnouts of all the Classes in 2010 relative to 2009. The Squib by the way was in decline versus both 2009 and 2000.

- we hear lots of the SB3 don't we? It's been growing since launch of course in 2002, but in the last five years the FF has turned out a bigger championship than the SB3 in three of them, including 2010... and six times out of the nine years (but allow for the SB3 launch years). However, they had 27 less competitors in 2010 than in 2009. How many new SB3s were built?? Five... How many new Fifteens ?? Twenty five. That's about £125,000 invested in the SB3 product and £450,000 in the Flying Fifteen Product...

- On the same theme, there were 10 new Squibs (£135,000) and 9 new RS Elites (£175,000)

So - my conclusion. Not a bad year for the Flying Fifteens. Number one for new boats in the year, and number one for money invested in the fleet in the year.
The Squibs seem to have peaked out, the K6 is finished and very interestingly the SB3 may now be going out of fashion. We'll see.