UKLA Chair Blog #73

Jan 15

It is amazing how much is going on in January, which is hopefully a sign of a booming class. Last night I got the race report from Queen Mary where, according to Marshall King, they had a cracking morning of winter racing followed by a nice hot shower and a good chin wag and I am sure this was repeated in many clubs over the weekend. There was UKLA training at WPNSA with over 30 ILCAs and a very active schedule over the coming weeks in all regions. I have also been reading reports from the British Sailing Team in Argentina at the ILCA6 Women’s World Championship while the men at warming up for their Worlds in Adeliade. The ILCA6 Youth Worlds are underway now (also in Argentina) and I was lucky enough to continue my preparation for the Masters Worlds in Adelaide in early February with six days in Malta with a healthy contingent of 11 other GBR Masters. And it’s only January.

At the Masters Nationals in 2021 at Pevensey I talked with Mike Kinnear, a very active ILCA Legend (over 75) who was returning following a heart procedure, and I thought his story was inspiring but also indicative of the inclusive nature of our class. I asked him to share his thoughts below. I will try and repeat from the youth end of the fleet in coming blogs.

Ancient Mariner

Mike Kinnear ‘Legend’

So how did I get started Sailing?

I blame Ruth, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife of some fifty-four years. Her brother James was building an Enterprise in his father’s garage and persuaded me to crew for him when it was ready for the water. I had never been in a sailing dinghy before, so joined the local Newtownards Sailing Club (that’s in N. Ireland) and was offered a trial crewing in a GP 14 - I was immediately ‘hooked’. I was a relatively late starter to sailing, being in my early 20’s, so it was a steep learning curve.

James and I took this sailing business quite seriously because neither of us were interested in just mucking about in boats, we wanted competition and to win. We quickly got started racing the Enterprise at the Club and took part in as many Regattas as possible. We divided up helming and crewing taking turn and turnabout. There was also a great traveller circuit in Ireland for Enterprises which we made use of to hone our skills and soon became a very competent team. This naturally led to taking part in Enterprise World Championships, mostly held in England and Scotland but with the odd one held at home in Ireland.

This partnership wasn’t to last as James disappeared to university, so I was crew less and my wife Ruth refused to show that burning desire to win at any cost. Trevor Millar (Mark – Trevor’s Sailcoach was hosting us in Malta last week) came to my rescue, and we had a couple of years doing the circuit. If my memory serves me right, it was Trevor who directed me to this ‘new Racing Dinghy on the block’ – “The Laser”. He seemed quite keen to get a Laser so, as I was in the process of losing my crew, I purchased my first Laser. This was in the early 1970’s so it heralded in an era of worldwide ownership of an affordable racing machine. Yes, it had all the original wooden foils and tiller and the minimum of controllable tackle. It even had a central mainsheet block jammer which could be a source of numerous capsizes. It was a racing machine that didn’t suffer fools gladly and you either quickly learned how to control it or you did a lot of swimming. The Laser had to go through several iterations in the form of control systems and the modern systems now in vogue make sailing the Laser (sorry, the ILCA - still can’t get used to the new name) so much easier to sail. In the old days you had to develop the technique of bringing the boat head to wind and leaning down on the boom to tighten the kicker, as the old kicker format had the minimum purchases. I sailed my ILCA in numerous events around Ireland with some success and eventually changed my allegiance in sailing clubs to Ballyholme. Being a much larger club with a sizeable ILCA fleet there was greater competition which I thrived on, competing against sailors like a young bloke called Bill O’Hara (I like to pretend that I taught him all he knew!). I worked for British Petroleum at the time and got the opportunity to transfer from Belfast Refinery to the Shetland Islands where they were constructing the large Oil Terminal. My pal from Ballyholme, Ron Hutchinson, managed to get my ILCA transferred on a construction material supply ship to the Oil Terminal. I like to think that I introduced the ILCA to the Shetland Islands (Mark – are there any ILCAs there now?) as it was the first one to make an appearance there and it has grown from strength to strength since then. Whilst on Shetland I missed out on the mainstream ILCA activities on the mainland, namely, the Master category.

It wasn’t until I got back to working in England in 1984 that I got involved with this form of competition. This format is not only very competitive but is also very socially minded and you get to travel extensively. I’ve lost count of the number of different countries I have visited taking part in European and World Championships, with the added bonus of taking my wife with me to enjoy the company of sailors and spouses from all over the world and who we still keep in touch with on a regular basis.

Of course, as I get older (80 this month) the body starts to wear out and one tends to end up swopping updates on our ailments. About 7 years ago I started to experience a tightening in my chest, and this seemed to happen during racing and training I suppose because I was exerting myself excessively. After various checks on my heart, I was packed off to hospital and had open heart surgery to renew my Aortic valve and an additional single bypass. I think because I was quite fit to start off with, that I made a rapid recovery and was back sailing 6 months later with no adverse effects. That is until about a year later when I was diagnosed with late onset type 1 diabetes. I thought that this must herald the end of my sailing mania, but the diabetes team at the Kings Lynn hospital worked with me on dietary matters and introduced me to a new constant glucose monitoring system. It consisted of a sensor I attached to my arm and a reader that I could put into a phone waterproof pouch. I could then swipe the sensor at any time on the water, usually between races, and give me the confidence that my blood sugars were within the limits to ensure I didn’t suffer a hypo (dangerously low blood sugar levels). The diabetes team was thrilled when I came back from the European Masters with a GGM Gold medal. Of course, that wasn’t the end of my health problems. One evening at home I started to pass-out several times and stopped breathing. This turned out to be a heart block called Bradycardia where the heart stops beating for a few seconds at a time. Back to hospital to have a Pacemaker fitted. I lost another 6 weeks sailing as I was not allowed to drive for that period.

How much longer am I going to keep racing?

I still get a great buzz from racing and I shall keep going as long as my health lets me and as long as I am still competitive. I don’t believe in just taking part, I am still driven to win and that is my drug of choice.

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