Advantages: Strong and durable, affordable, simple to sail and rig Disadvantages: Less sutable for experanced sailors
The topper sailingdinghy is an robust, affordable sailingdinghy which can be sailed by people of all ages making it an excellent choice for families.
The design of the Topper means that it can be easily and effectively reefed as required. This is important for use with children when it is often desirable to reduce the power in more than light winds. Despite this the boat is still relatively speedy and certainly give the impression of speed to those who want it!
The topper is both light enough (43 Kg) and small enough to be put on the roof rack of a car making towing unnecessary. The construction of the topper is of plastic so it does not require any major maintenance and can not rot! The boat is modular in design so if something breaks or wears out then it is just a matter of unbolting it and bolting on a replacement! Spares ...
Advantages: Vertually indistructable Disadvantages: Hard to have more than one person on board unless you like getting wet
The Topper is an excellent youth boat. It is the perfect progression towards sailing larger single handed dingys when you get older. It is now even better than when I sailed it. You can now modify it to have a centre main sheet which again aids the transfer to more powerful boats in the future.
It is great for people new to the sport and can take the battering of children or the not so in control sailors. I for one have had 12 people on it at once and have ramed it into a few jetties without any damage. It is great for practicing capsize skills as it is fairly light to bring up and as I have said it can take the strains. It is both a performance boat for racing and also a brillient boat for fun. They are also readily avaliable second hand and new and there is no worry of not being able to get any replacement parts.
There are ...
Advantages: Great fun and super experience Disadvantages: Not too good if you get really seasick
we were forced to stay at anchor overnight and the consequences of this were we were unable to do as much sailing as we would have liked, we had little time and it wasn't very safe to cross the channel and visit a French port, as had been planned.
Another great perk of participating in the young leader's award was that we were asked to provide the evening entertainment in the form of a quiz. This actually proved to be very successful and everyone became involved in a challenging quiz with one question being and that still puzzles my mind: In what note do toilets flush? Answer: D minor!
Day 4: Thursday
On the penultimate day we pulled up anchors and began our descent down the River Thames, just after breakfast. I wasn't on watch during the morning so I had a bit of free time which I spent relaxing for a while - something which seems ...
