Homage to the Ovington Mk IX....

The VC and I took lunch with the Rear Commodore, Mike Clapp, on Sunday. We had great conversation on Life, the Universe and Everything... to do with sailing. It turns out that the RC is becoming concerned with his sailing of the RS500, as he not infrequently comes ashore after one race, there being nobody to sail against. Handicap racing is not really racing, is it? You have to sympathise... It seems that our recent turnout of ten boats for a Club race has turned a few heads...He also voiced significant concerns about the market into which he can onsell his boat when the time comes - and what the true cost of ownership of sailing some classes really is.

What's this to do with us, I hear you say? Well, you know how the VC can be - the conversation took a sharp swing towards, "Come and join the Flying Fifteens then". The RC went straight to the list price of a new boat (I don't know why people do this, but they do...), which is insane as we all know. So we inevitably came to the subject of, "why don't you consider a Mk IX Ovi?" Mike's a great chap, does ever such a lot for the Club (and, behind the scenes, our Fleet). He is the man behind the Club Website's rebirth. He'd be a great man in our fleet and would turn out to race - if we could ever charm him across to the slip.

So I have tried to trap the essence of the Mk IX discussion in a new datchetman page - you will see the draft of it under "About Owning" on the black border of the photo above. Can you, especially you Mk IX owners, take a look and let me know if I have captured the gist of our argument. Then we can polish it up and try to promote our viewpoint by the time the Datchet Alexandra Palace team take the stand......