Three-Person Keelboat - Sonar

Boat Adaptations - The Big Bus v. the Gold Medal Chair!

The Sonars at this Paralympic Sailing Competition have been adapted in numerous ways to enable the sailors to compete effectively and safely both at disabled sailing events and in open competition. The enormous variety of disabilities that the sailors have means that the adaptations to the boats vary considerably

Seats allow the sailors to position themselves so they can control the tiller and sheet without fear of falling. These can be as simple as a lawn chair modified to fit a cockpit or as complex as a translating seat, which allows a sailor to switch sides. Seats include the lawn chair, wheelchair bases, golf cart seats and other easily adapted seats. The transfer bench allows sailors to switch sides when tacking or gybing and can be anything from a sturdy cooler in the middle of the cockpit, a custom cockpit filler, to platforms that fill in the cockpit area.

Steering devices take many forms, including a collapsing metal tiller, which allows free movement from one side of the boat to another, or wheel steering. One steering system uses levers on both sides of the boat. Handholds and bars provide stability for the sailor in the sailing position or in a move from one side to the other. Sheet fine tune and other systems provide assistance to sailors with weakness or poor muscle function; these comply with relevant class and IFDS rules.

There are two in particular which are a talking point around the boat park and they are the Swedish boat and the Greek boat. Both of the skippers in these teams are quadriplegic athletes, Gustaf FRESK heads up the Swedish team and Vasilis CHRISTOFOROU is the Greek skipper.

The Greek Sonar team are a relatively unknown entity at this event and do not have a proven record with which to compare them against the other teams. They do however have a ‘secret weapon’. The coaching advice and ideas of Keith BARHANS from the United Sates who narrowly missed out on securing his nations slot for these Paralympic Games. For some years now Burhans has been developing a chair which enables a quadriplegic athlete to helm the boat safely and competitively.

The user of this the ‘Gold Medal Chair’ is strapped in to the chair to provide trunk stability and the feet are secured with foot straps. The hands are then attached to two pedals using a quick release system and from there the sailor is able to steer the boat. To move the tiller from the central position right the way across the boat takes just three turns of the pedal system which is just like a bicycle, and three turns back in reverse to the centre again. The movement is extremely smooth and the tiniest adjustment to the pedals results in movement of the tiller.

The chair is fixed to a curved traveller system which enables it to be moved across the boat and when it comes to tacking or gybing it is the job of the main trimmer to ‘tack’ the helm. One of the interesting things about this design is that the helm is positioned infront of the main traveller with the main trimmer behind him and the traveller. This offers the helm an entirely different view of the jib and the course around him as well as bringing the weight of the system into the centre of the boat. Christoforou, the skipper competed in Athens at the 2003 IFDS World Disabled Sailing Championship in the 2.4mR using an electronic joystick system and the introduction of the ‘gold medal chair’ to him has played a large part in enabling him to switch classes.

The Swedish design is similar in that the chair is tacked from side to side using a traveller system and the helm steers with a mechanism that runs back from a central device in front of the chair to the tiller behind him. The Big Bus, as it has been named around the boat park, incorporates a wheel, much like that a used by a bus driver in that it is angled horizontally, that helmsman Gustaf FRESK turns in order to steer the boat. This system is more conventional in that the helm is positioned at the back of the boat behind the mainsheet traveller and moves under the tiller during the tack. Fresk also has a large helmsmans loop which runs across the boat and is used to help with balance and stability.

For safety reasons both systems can be easily disconnected so that the tiller itself can used to steer the boat and all adaptations have to be approved by the IFDS Medical and Technical Committees before use at an IFDS event.

The question is, do the Greek team really have the 'gold medal chair'? All will be revealed by Thursday 23 September, the last day of racing for the 2004 Paralympic Sailing Competition.

ISAF, 17 September 2004, 11:23