Photos courtesy of Nika Davis https://nikadavis.com
BUILD, SETUP, TUNE AND RACE AN INTERNATIONAL ONE METRE (IOM) YACHT
Latest Site News
29/01/2024
Trial of new rudder successful and Alioth now fully configured. Pleased to say it is on pace. Time to test it with new sails at the next meeting
20/01/2024
Major restructure of web site to divide the Classes, designs, boat building and racing tips. I hope this is more logical to navigate
12/01/2024
Good work out at Hampton Court with issues in the rig set up. Work to do
Introduction/Why this site
In 2020, I built and sailed an IOM model yacht for the first time. It was a tortuous journey researching all the information and as a past dinghy world champion, olympic campaigner, yacht skipper and tactician, I wanted to delve deep into the IOM resources to help me on my journey. IOM information is scattered in a fractured manner across the web so it made sense to me to catalogue what I learned, add in my own racing knowledge and experience to that already out there and show my "Alternative" build in glass epoxy. By putting the knowledge into this web site and sharing it with newcomers and existing owners, I hope it will provide a valuable resource and short cut to build on their existing knowledge. If I have missed any valuable web sites, please forward the link and I will add it on.
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A Repository of all things IOM, Marblehead and DF95
Any text in blue contains a link. Click on it to go to the website site/section
This site contains:
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All key tips and tricks documents and videos I discovered on the web
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Links to suppliers and associations,
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A section on how to prepare and get round the race course faster
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A descriptive and pictorial view of the build of two epoxy/glass boats.
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An Acknowledgement to all those who helped me on my journey
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A blog on tips and tricks and my racing journal
Sign up as a member and get your copy of "Thought for the day" by mail.
There are 4 sections.
1 A catalogue of websites for boat manufacturers, sailmakers, fitting suppliers etc. See the menu "Useful web sites"
2 Details on everything I have learnt over my sailing career along with the best tips from the web to get round a race course in the fastest way. See the menu "Racing Tips". I am adding to this topic all the time.
3 A pictorial view of the build of my own boats and the working up of IOM, M and DF95.
4 "Thought for the day" on the menu above is my blog on aspects of tuning and racing an IOM and shares my progress campaigning a Britpop around the country.
If you like the site or would like to see other information, please send a message and sign up to be a member
WHO IS THIS SITE FOR
Beginners, racers and amateur boat builders
NEW TO RADIO SAILING
Irrespective of which class you are looking to enter, there is valuable information on suppliers, tactics and racing and choosing a boat and notes on building if you decide to go down that route
CLUB IOM SAILOR
By applying some of the tactics, trim notes and learning a bit more about the rules, you can improve the performance of you and your boat and get the results you want in your club racing.
THE COMPETITIVE RACER
All the information in Racing an IOM menu will be relevant, particularly the observations in the videos of the championship races to understand the nuances of starting and getting to the front of the fleet 1st windward leg.
What people are saying about the web site
"Thanks Nigel for a brilliant web site"
"Delighted to find your site - I’m a new convert to IOM ownership so I’m really pleased to get access to such a great resource"
"Wow what a great source. Just became interested in the IOM after discovering on YouTube. Thanks"
"As someone who used to professionally build and manage large websites, you've done a great job."
"Oh, I could see I made some mistakes in WC 2019 Brazil...
Nice job !"
"Nigel, Outstanding efforts. This information will assist many of us. Thank You for all the information
Excellent resource, and very useful. Thanks for putting in so much hard work!"
"Awesome job!
A FINAL WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
I would like to say a big thank you for visiting this IOMBuildSetupTuneRace site. My goal is to consolidate and share information on IOM stuff on the web site and combine it my own dinghy racing experience over 35 years. It was built out of my frustration getting access to good information on radio sailing and particularly IOM boats. I used to work for a company that collected data and presented it online to customers (for a large fee of course) so this was a logical step for me.
The web site is now complete from a racing and boat build point of view and I hope it will help newcomers and existing owners. The next stage is to focus on racing and observation on mast sail combinations to truly understand what the best setup is. It is a constant learning process. If there is anything else you would like covered I would be delighted to research and publish. Please let me know
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One favour I would ask is for feedback. They say that no news is good news but I would like to hear what you think. The site has over 8000 visitors (according to WIX stats) and has been studied for over 3652 hours at the last count so I assume that the info is relevant. Let me know what you think. Send me links to any boat build projects you have and I will add these to the site. I have detailed an epoxy build but would like to reference more woody projects.
Please share the site as far and wide as possible so as many can benefit as possible. This is not a commercial venture but I do get a kick out of seeing the number of users growing which is my return for building this site.
Finally a huge thank you to Brad Gibson who has offered continuous guidance on the development of my sailing rig development, selling me his boat and offering occasional guidance on the content of the web site and posts (see more in acknowledgements).
Keep safe and have a fabulous sailing year.
Nigel