IG07 Sports

Sailing includes two different types of vessels and the separate discipline of sailboarding.

Sailing

When it became an Olympic sport in 1900, the boats were really yachts, large boats with as many as 10 crew members.

Over the years the big yachts were gradually replaced by smaller, one-man design sailboats that put emphasis on the skill of the sailors rather than the inherent speed of the vessel. Results were determined by a series of seven races from 1936-1988.

Up until 1984, all classes were open to men and women. In 1988, separate men's and women's competitions were added to some events, while others remained open to both sexes.

As sailing requires a large body of water, the sport has often been held at some distance from the city hosting the Olympics; at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the sailing competition was held in Savannah!

No such problem in the Island Games, where strangely enough, water is always readily available.

There are two classes of competition, Laser Standard Rig and Laser Radial Rig. The Laser Radial uses a more flexible and slightly shorter lower mast together with a sail area 18% smaller than the Laser Standard.

The Laser Standard can be sailed by any weight in light winds, but as the wind increases it is better suited to higher sailor weights. There will be eight races in each category.

Sailboarding

Or Windsurfing, or Boardsailing, is a sport that combines sailing and surfing which uses a one-person craft called a sailboard. A sailboard is composed of a board and a rig.

In 1948, twenty-year old Newman Darby first conceived of using a hand held sail and rig mounted on a universal joint, to control a small catamaran. Darby did not file for a utility patent, but he is considered the inventor of the first sailboard.

Then in 1965, two good friends from southern California, Hoyle Schweitzer and Jim Drake, wanted to combine surfing and sailing. They had seen that the major problem in surfing was that you had to wait for waves.

Jim Drake was an aeronautical designer and Schweitzer a businessman. Drake came up with the idea of an articulated mast and so they developed the universal joint.

By the end of 1968 they patented the first windsurf board, the "Windsurfer". From that day on windsurfing grew in popularity. Very soon the boards became shorter and lighter.

The sinker boards were invented, the foot-straps and the harness and the funboard was invented. In the beginning it was only practiced on Hawaii, then it spread across the globe as wave sailing was born.

Ixia Bay on the west coast of Rhodes.

In Rhodes

Sailing has a long history on the island, there are two sailing clubs. Many National and International races are organised in Rhodes with the support of the National Sailing Federation.

The laser and windsurfing events will take place on the west coast of Rhodes, and they will be starting from the Nautical Club of Rhodes.