SUMMER 2019
SW
020
QJon Partridge plants his feet
wide and firm on the asphalt,
then leans into his cordless
drill as its titanium bit gouges
a hole into a blue metal mobile-
storage rack. The bit screeches
until it finally plunges into the
frame’s hollow. One down,
many more holes to go. He
stands upright, arches his back
to stretch, then pulls his cell-
phone from his pocket to takea call from the home oce in
England, many time zones away
from San Diego. The skin on the
back of his neck is flaking o
in large pieces, seared from a
week of assembling, shadowing
and filming his brand-new fleet
of keelboats.
As one of three directors of
powerhouse small-boat builder,
RS Sailing, Partridge should
be in a corner oce back at
HQ, but no, he has skin in the
game—seared or not—and is
determined that the U.S. launch
of the RS21 keelboat class is a
smashing success. In a country
notoriously resistent to new
classes—particularly from
foreign builders—Partridge and
company have their work cut
out. However, with the debutof the class in San Diego, the
cornerstone is now set.
The RS21, introduced in
2018, is an innovative and
attractive keelboat built of
recyclable materials; light-
weight, versatile and fun to sail
in light and strong breezes. It’s
designed for club sailors and
targets any yacht club with
the financial wherewithal to
purchase a fleet. Without a vastdealer network to champion and
demo the boat in key markets,
however, RS and its import
partner, Sail22—a raceboat-
concierge business based in
Indiana—will spend most of
2019 schlepping boats around
the country, making them
available for charter at select
regattas, including Sailing
World’s Helly Hansen NOODs.
In San Diego, six boats arrive
in a single shipping container,
are assembled by Partridge
and Sail22’s Ed Furry and Sean
Wilson and delivered to a variety
of teams—including one squad
of club sailing directors from
San Francisco Bay, a team of
experienced junior sailors and
a Melges 24 champion and
his pro entourage. The sailorssimply rock up to Coronado YC,
race three days and put the
boats away wet. Sail22 packs
the boats and ships them in
custom triple-stack cradles on
a flatbed truck from San Diego
to Charleston, South Carolina,
then on to Annapolis, Maryland,
Chicago and Marblehead,
Massachusetts, with a few
stops between.
“RS’s success in exports is
finding a way to economically
ship the boat,” Partridge says,
exhaling and admiring the new
hole in his cradle. “The boats
are designed to be stackable
or fit sensibly into a container
because shipping takes up one-
tenth of the cost of the boat.”
Although the days and nights
are long for Partridge, Furry and
Wilson, the reward is sailors
enthusiastically endorsing the
boat at the end of each day.“We knew the American
market would like it,” Partridge
says, “but we didn’t know how
much they’d like it. The main
thing about trying to launch a
class—and we’ve probably done
it more than any other manu-
facturer today—is you have to
listen to the market.”
Introducing a new keelboat
into an overcrowded pool of
older one-designs is a heady
task, but he sees opportu-
nity everywhere he goes. “The
uneducated sailor would say
the world doesn’t need this
boat, but the response we’ve
gotten has been incredible.
There’s a thing in sailing where
you’re either one or the other,
so classes don’t get along with
each other,” he says. “We don’thave to be competitive about
whose class is better. The trib-
alism in our sport is not healthy.”
Partridge’s off-the-cuff
forecast is 150 boats before the
end of the year, most of them
headed to club-based sailing
leagues popping up in Europe.
“We’re still a relatively small
operation based in Cowes,” he
admits. “If we have to tool up
for a second set of tools, it can
be done in a month.”
RS is ambitious, if anything,
and growing by the day. “We’ve
put a lot of resources into
launching the 21—a lot—and
we wouldn’t do that if we didn’t
utterly believe it was going to
go a long way,” Partridge says.
“Anyone that has got on the boat
smiles and says, ‘OK, I get it.’ I can
see why good sailors enjoy sailing
it equally with a bunch of kids.”
The “kids” in this instance arejunior sailors from San Diego
YC, sponsored for the NOOD
by Helly Hansen. Skipper Jack
Egan shares his favorite thing
about the boat is “the super-
light helm.”
“It felt like I was whipping
around my FJ, it was so easy,”
he says. “Juniors are hungry
to be able to compete against
adults in a boat as similar to
their dinghies as possible,
and the RS21 bridges the gap
even further, for fleet, match
and team racing.”
Match racing, in particular,
he adds, is becoming more
popular with junior sailors, but
the problem is, “almost all of this
racing is done in boats that were
made well before we were born.”
Not if Partridge can help it. QSTARTING LINE
INDUSTRY
BY DAVE REED
Fresh Arrivals
Launching a new keelboat class is no easy
task, but someone wants to do itJon Partridge of RS Sailing, and Ed Furry and Sean Wilson of Sail22, prepare the RS21s for a cross-country delivery.
PHOTO: PAUL TODD/OUTSIDEIMAGES.COM