The UK Cherub is a two-person 12 foot racing dinghy with asymmetric spinnaker and twin trapezes. Just twelve feet long, weighing around 70kgs fully rigged for sailing, the UK Cherub combines spectacular performance with the “on the edge” handling characteristics only found in true lightweight skiffs.
The UK Cherub rules are simple and allow for maximum flexibility for designers, allowing boats to be created to incorporate sailor's own ideas. Also meaning the class develops over time as techniques, materials and ideas improve. All this makes the Cherub one of the most interesting and innovative of all dinghies: The challenge extends from the sailing skills to setting up the boat to suit the sailor, and maybe even designing and building, too.
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Poole YC Regatta
An action packed weekend at Poole Yacht Club with multiple classes and fleets sharing the harbour resulted in some tight course laying in some exciting wind conditions.
The plan was for 3 races back to back, using a complicated outer loop windward leeward with a reach out and back to it. The bottom reach to the finish was a particarly 'interesting' white sailer in decent breeze. The Saturday started with a postponement waiting for the wind. When the wind arrived it quickly built to 12-15knts.
The first race started with most Cherubs on the line, sharing it with the local asymmetric fleet. After the initial beat followed a broad reach to the outer loop. Here was where matters got interesting. This was for two reasons:
a) the outer loop was tiny, about a minute downwind with the kite up b) the outerloop was set right in the middle of the slow boats course, so full of toppers, mirrors and GP14's who were making there way in lines upwind on their opening lap.
Result, frenetic activity, many near collisions and plenty of dramatic avoidance techniques required by all (including swimming for some) In between all of this, a decent race for the lead developed between Usagi and Riot Van. Not far behind there was a good tussle for position between Ronin and Badgers. Ronin showed exceptional pace footing and speeding upwind with Badgers pointing well and nailing some well positioned tacks. Result of race one was Usagi taking the bullet, Riot Van dropped back a bit, with Badgers in 3rd and Ronin 4th.
By race 2 the wind had built to 18-20knts. There was a long wait between races during which Usagi and Riot Van practiced for the sychronised capsizing event to be inaugurated at this years Nationals whilst Badgers tried to remain composed by doing some hooning and corners practise. The course remained the same, mirrors etc still present, only with more wind the closing speeds were increased! Racing was again tight throughout for the first couple of laps until mistakes took their toll and caused to spread the fleet out a bit. Badgers used their weighty experience to keep the sails pointing upwards and lead to a clear win. Ronin, Usagi and Riot Van swapped places behind with Ronin generally in front until a particularly viscious gust knocked them down and their dagger board decided it had enough of Ross bouncing on it and cracked. This left Usagi free to finish 2nd with Riot Van a fairly distant third.
The course was re-set for race three giving a longer and clearer outer loop. Only three cherubs started this race, the wind was still fairly pokey at 15-20knts with some nice sustained gusts. Badgers had clearly got over their first win nerves and cruised to have another clear win taking line honours ahead of the local RS800 and asymnetric fleet, Riot Van kept their sails relatively dry to finish second. Usagi completed some vital capsize recovery training (having capsized more in this one race than in 4 seasons of RS200 racing) and finished an even more distant third.
Cherub 2303 (The Cats Whiskers) a 1970's era Forman 4 which has recently been salvaged and brough out of retirement was being sailed in the medium handicap by Noycey's Dad and Girlfriend. They spent the day chasing GP14's playing cat and mouse with them around the course as the wind went up and down, but managed to score 2 easy bullets. This boat will be going to the nationals so we want to get as many oldies there as possible to continue the classic revival.
After sailing the fleet spent the evening sat out on the club patio eating hog roast, drinking beer and generally being merry!
Sunday dawned very windy, after a long postponement waiting for the water to arrive the majority of the Cherub fleet had decided to call it a day and pack up for long journeys home. Badgers was ready for action, but in the end opted out of launching as the only asymetric boat in an effort not to break anything ahead of Thornbury.
As memory serves, the final results looked like this…
1 - Badgers Nadgers - 3,1,1
2 - Usagi - 1,2,3
3 - Riot Van - 2,3,2
Many thanks to all that helped out to ensure all the fleet members had a great weekend, be that providing floor space for resting sleepy heads or assisting with boat transportation (you know who you are 
)
This weekend see's the travellers series going to Thornbury… looks to be windy again! See you there.
Largo Bay Nationals - Day 2
Thursday morning greeted the Cherub fleet with clouds heavy rain, and very little wind, this cleared through the morning and we were all glad that we were not over the water in North Berwick where there seemed to be a rain cloud stuck all morning. The rain cleared away as the boats started to rig, and just as the first boats launched a nice wind arrived from the East.
Race 3
With a good size course set and good breeze the race got off to a clean start with Chris “the Scrote” Lewns in Antidote getting a clear start accelerating away from everyone like they had an outboard motor, they stayed in front till the end of the race. Atum Bom had a better time in this race being much more suited to the breeze and managed to claw there way to 3rd position despite there customary rubbish start. Andy and Jill Peters had their best race of the day managing to miss seaweed and unauthorised swimming to finish 2nd. There was close racing between the 97 rules boats, with Will and Beth in Born Slippy, Phil and Carol in Pocket Rocket and Davro and Matt in the Pasta Frenzy swapping places regularly throughout the race, Born Slippy had the edge up wind, with the others catching down wind, it ended with Pocket, the Pasta and Born slippy finishing with about 20 seconds between them.
Race 4
The course was shortened a bit for race four as the breeze had dropped to a tricky intermediate with loads of crouching on the trapeze, with occasional twin wiring, it was a tricky decision whether to hot it up down wind or to soak. Chris “the scrote” lewns lead the way around the corse again, closely followed by Paul Croute and Tim Unerman in Atum bom, Graham and Eddie in Riot Van got third after a good ding dong with Andy and Jill Peters in Usagi Yojimbo coming in third. Badgers Nadgers had a good race fighting with Ronin swapping places on most legs. Badgers had the ability to point, Ronin had mastered footing and flying but on this occasion the result was pretty similar in round the cans pace. Badgers just pipped Ronin at the finish for seventh. The 97 rules boats again had a good race with plenty of swapping places up wind and down. Despite horrific spinnaker pole problems on the vintage symmetric rigged the cats whiskers managed to keep ahead of the flying kipper who were struggling to tame the turbo tango! Various problems arose with the demon pole during the race mainly down to tims poor knot tying, if you cant tie knots tie lots! At one point when the halyard was wrapped round the bow and the pole was stuck up in the air due to the spinnaker down-haul block being stuck under |tims sparkly new D1.5's Kate decided it would be much better if Howard concentrated on where they were going and she sorted out the issue!
Race 5
Stu Tinner and Ross Burkin (the gurkin) sailing Ronin stormed through the fleet to get their best nationals race result to date with close fought race, just 20 seconds behind Graham and Eddie Bridle in Riot Van . Chris (the scroat) Lewns and Tom Pygall were racing ahead and while initially Atum Bom was tussling with Ronin and Riot, they pulled out into a comfortable second place. Dean Ralph and Simon Jones have started to show some of the potential of their new E6 Eleanor with a fifth place. Usagi suffered an unfortunate capsize early in the race but then showed their class and sailed back through the fleet for a respectable finish. The boys in Cheese showed that they had the skill to cope with breeze to consolidate their high flying results on day one and finished a solid 8th. Andy and Jill swapped sailing for swimming and had fun showing the Cheeseheads an E5 close up (John has an E5 in build).
Series
After five races the front end of the fleet looks like:
| Position | Boat Name | Sail No | Crew Name | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Antidote to Panel Games | 2699 | C Lewns T Pygall | 4 |
| 2 | Usagi Yojimbo | 3202 | A Peters J Peters | 9 |
| 3 | Atum Bom | 2688 | P Croate T Unerman | 13 |
The Frolics
Back on shore the class had it's AGM, which was followed by a pub quiz in the Raylway including a special Cherub themed round, which had only a few questions on boats, but loads on fat flying babies.