Chris Bentley
Message from the Bridge
If anyone wants to raise an AGM topic but can’t make it to the meeting, please email it to me chris@fleetdesign.com and I will agenda it.
Your NSA Committee is in need of new blood, including Chairman after the 2012 AGM, when I retire. Currently, we badly need a treasurer, a Scottish rep and, dare I say it, some more active area reps in general. None of the jobs are onerous on time or effort and you get to make lots of Sonata friends.
After the AGM I will post the minutes, but just to get you thinking, our numbers (paid-up members) are shrinking. Collectively, we need to address this trend, and reverse it if possible. Is it the boat, the way we run the racing, the geography of the events, the lack of ambition / cost of travelling, or what?
Other, older Classes, and the Dragon Class, X Class, spring to mind, thrive and we have a boat that gives us many more bangs for bucks than those two, We can, and do, attract young members. In the last couple of weeks I have met the young Selene team (Poole), Serenity (West Mersea), I can also count So (Aberdeen and no hard feelings, Gareth)! and in previous years, quite a few more ‘young’ boats. Max, my son, is campaigning a borrowed Medway boat with a Cadet team in this year’s Burnham Week and Easterns. So, its not just us old fogies sitting out our time on our 30 year-old craft, despite the attractions of high-tech dinghies to the 18 year olds. They actually enjoy the boat, and, probably tellingly, can, with help, afford it. Should we do more to encourage them? If so, what? We, NSA, do have funds to spend. Suggestions please, as to how we might best use them to re-start the interest in the Class.
Chris 
peterbooth
Hi Chris,
Firstly I do not wish to resign as Scottish rep as yet unless someone more active in the class wishes to take it on but we had discussed the possibility of an East of Scotland rep as well. My membership renewal has not come through as yet for this year and I have emailed Tom regarding this in the past.
On the class itself we are all feeling the pinch up here and not just Sonatas. The cost of travelling with a Sonata to events is just not practical for most owners here, putting the boat in and out of the water, hiring a suitable tow vehicle and organising crew has always been beyond most peoples means.
I also wonder if there is too much benefit for the ‘stripped for racing’ boats perhaps a survey of which boats are winning at events around the country might reveal that an additional handicap should be made to them. I do recognise that they might be better equipped and better sailed as well.
In Scotland the turnouts for the Scottish series were very poor for the Sonatas only 4 but the general turnout was much lower as well. Locally we are still getting 7 or 8 boats a drop of 2 whereas the general handicap has dropped from about 20 to a similar 7 or 8.
Sadly I don’t think most of us know the answers and as some of us are considerably older than our old but much loved boats I hope that there is still enough enthusiasm to keep the class going.
I did pass a Sonata on the M6 last week coming North and it had passed the Lakes turn off so I hope it has arrived in Scotland so if the ‘new owner’ of Baby Grand wishes to contact me to let us know where it is and if I can be of any assistance I will be pleased to hear from them.
Peter
Catherine Hartley
Hi Everyone
Just a little note about Sonata Publicity. I think that the sonata has had some great publicity in recent years – articles in Practical Boat Owner (feb 2011 most recent – see the article on this website) frequently feature the sonata and we have had boats on the front cover as well (A Sharp Exit!). Plus we do try and encourage people to send reports to the sonata website and to Y&Y and we can only do this with the help of enthusiastic area reps and class captains at sailing clubs. The resurgence of the Mini-Ton class has also been of benefit as the sonata sits well in this class and hopefully the high profile of the events, in particular at Cowes, and the success of the Quarter Ton class will reap benefits in the future.
I disagree that sailors don’t know about the class – we find quite the opposite at clubs we visit, that most people know about or have sailed a sonata before and are very found of the class and the boats excellent reputation as a good sea boat and great in both class and IRC/PYS racing. With sonata one-design classes at both Cowes and Tarbert in the past and a good following in Dublin Bay and Strangford Lough the class is still strong, this can be seen from new fleets emerging in Whitby and Brixham recently.
However we are in difficult times and it may be that people are not travelling as much to events as they used to, so we also need to encourage sonata club sailing as well as travelling.We are looking into incentives for Association members travelling to events at the AGM on the 9th July, so would be interested in any comments from members. Travelling to events brings huge benefits, not just in visiting places you have never been and making new friends for life, but also in improving your racing and learning from the people at the front of the fleet.
Overall the sonata class is still strong and it is still a great boat to race and cruise at low cost, and alot of fun! 
See you at Brixham.
Catherine Hartley
Secretary, NSA
” A Sharp Exit”
PS We need a southern rep not a scottish rep!
Olly Bewes
Hi All
I too am concerned about the dwindling popularity of the class. When I decided to race High Note two years ago I was very dissapointed by the lack of boats racing in the solent, despite seeing sontas moored up in every harbour I visit.
I would be very keen to assist in the publicity, however the difficulty for me is knowing how to contact other owners. This forum is very under used and posts are met with silence more often that not. Now we have a facebook page, surely this will dilute use of the forum further?
A useful start would be a public fleet database listing known boats, owners, locations and association membership staus. Contacting boats who are not members is also very important. I would like to be able to canvas Solent owners well in advance of the season to a) find out if they intend to race at all and if so promote which events stand the best chance of multiple sonata entries c) if not, why do they not intend to race.
The resurgence of the Mini-Ton class has also been of benefit as the sonata sits well in this class and hopefully the high profile of the events, in particular at Cowes
The resurgance of the mini-ton class in the solent is great and in my opinion the best chance the class has of having some decent racing in the solent. We currently have 4 mini-tonners committed to racing in the IRC solent series. This is great, but it is still fragile so we could really do with some support from other sonatas.
The mini ton cup is also set to be a very well attended event this year.
Catherine, when you say cowes, do you mean cowes week? Please see my post about cowes week in “announcements of races and regattas”, as yet we have very few entries, 4 compared to 7 last year. We could do with at least 3 more entries to maintain cowes as a high profile event. Ideas on how to promote this would be much appreciated and I’d be happy to do so.
Regards
Olly
Catherine Hartley
Hi Olly
Thanks for your comments
We are looking for a southern rep at the moment and it sounds like you would be ideally placed in the solent area to help us out!
With regard to boat register, we do have a very comprehensive database with over 300 boats listed on it. Of them probably 100 or so are current 2011 members of the association. I am not sure that i would put this out as a public database though. This year i did write/email every boat on the database that i had details for to see if they would join the asssociation. We are trying to trace all the sonatas ever built and this is hard especially when boats are sold and we are not told where they have gone. We do rely on the reps keeping an eye open for boats and their location and occassionally i trawl race results for events to check out boats and there whereabouts and whether they are members !
We have the AGM on saturday at Dabchicks so if you would like to be involved in the association that would be great, just email myself or Chris Bentley (details on the association pages).
Catherine
PS I can also forward you details of all the solent/southern boats on the database if you are keen to be the southern rep!
Gareth Martel
I also wonder if there is too much benefit for the ‘stripped for racing’ boats perhaps a survey of which boats are winning at events around the country might reveal that an additional handicap should be made to them. I do recognise that they might be better equipped and better sailed as well.
Hi all,
I’m not sure in this sense what you mean by stripped out. The weight penaty for removing the lining panels for example is significantly more than the weight of the panels themselves, forepeak weight is possibly slightly less, but sits at the front (I’ve put So’s forepeak back in), the only possible benefit might be in losing the cooker, even then there’s not a huge much difference in the weight, and it sits much higher. I suspect that the big benefits are in fact made by the boats with nothing extra on board, hull stripped to one layer of antifoul, etc.. , and of course most or all new or nearly new sails (those goacher no 1s are quick but sure do lose their top end of speed quickly, typically after about 10-14 days of regatta racing in moderate or more breeze in my opinion). I would be very wary to penalise racing setups in order to attempt to increase racing.
What we really need is a better way of communicating who will be racing at what events, and not just the big ones. I have been looking for events with any other sonatas to race against into the last couple weekends in July, and then on into August, willing to travel, I can tell you it’s not easily done!
Unfortunately I can’t attend the AGM, work commitments (shame cause otherwise I would, and that would be another overnight tow!), would be great if people could try to come up with an idea of a way of communicating when and where they are racing. There surely is a potential Internet facility where everything from club racing to nationals could be displayed, and every boat let each other know if they are planning to go, or would be interested if others are?
Just my few thoughts!
Gareth
Ps still awaiting news on my next rota, still a chance we may be able to get So.. to Cowes week!
hasteaway
Hi Chris,
Glad you survived your weekend adventure and look forward to hearing the story.
I’m not sure if I should raise this here or on a separate thread. Also I am not a member of the Association but do crew regularly on a Members boat (perhaps I should join as well then!).
I think one of the main reasons for the decline in Membership might be declining awareness of the class amongst the general sailing public. I believe the profile of the class has gone a little bit ‘below the radar’ in recent years; I have found that chatting to other sailors outside our club awareness of the class is not that high. I don’t know what other Sonata sailors experience of this is, perhaps that is just my own impression. If it is true, then we need to get more content on websites outside this forum like Yachts and Yachting (eg Dabchicks Nationals report which went on their front page yesterday) and other websites and printed media.
Could the Area Reps (I’m ‘Mr’ Rachel Ramsay who is the Dabchicks Rep) be encouraged to send more reports from their area when there’s a Sonata event (or regatta with Sonatas competing)? As an example of this I noticed the squib class (another older class) seems to be quite good at this with regular previews of events and reports.
Just one point of view which might start a discussion, and apologies if I have hijacked your AGM thread!
Cheers
Toby Ramsay
GBR8090N Camel
Dabchicks SC