Winner of the Stonehaven Cup Interstate Championship

A broad metal cup with a flower grill, which is permanently attached to a multi-tiered round wooden base carrying engraved shields for each winning boat

12 Foot Cadet Dinghy

The Cadet Dinghy has gone through an extraordinary number of changes over time: from heavy wooden hull through light-weight Western Red Cedar hull to fibreglass hull, from gaff rig to bermudan rig, from fully open boat with no added buoyancy to fore and aft buoyancy tanks and ultimately to fully integrated side buoyancy tanks, from steel centreplate to aluminium alloy centreplate, and from fixed blade rudder to swing blade rudder.

The constant thing in all of this has been the hull, which has preserved its external shape and load carrying capacity. It is the fact that the Cadet Dinghy was designed to carry a team of three adolescents which has been a core distinguishing feature of the design and a great enabler of the social interaction so important to teenagers.

RS Quest

The Quest is very modern, having been designed over 2014 and 2015, and launched into production in November 2015. With its clean lines, white hull, coloured sail patches, and square-topped mainsail, it has a striking, contemporary look.

While it was designed primarily as a three or four crew trainer, the high aspect rig, combined with a large sail area, provides exciting sailing in a moderate wind, and presents handling challenges in a heavy wind.

As a sign of the world-wide rate of sales of these boats, RBYC’s first boat “QUESTionable” has hull number “133”, and 18 months later, its most recent acquisition “John Akhurst” has hull number “1472”.

Transitioning to the RS Quest

In January 2017, the Stonehaven Cup National Council agreed in principle to the transitioning of the equipment platform from the Cadet Dinghy to the RS Quest, subject to equipment acquisition approvals at each of the competing clubs. It was understood then that the duration of the transition period to the new platform would be determined by the time to acquire the new boats, and that this might take several years.

As it has turned out, the January 2018 regatta became the last Stonehaven Cup to be contested in the Cadet Dinghy. All of the competing clubs have now managed to acquire RS Quests, and so the January 2019 Stonehaven Cup will be the first to be contested in the RS Quest. This is a substantial achievement for the clubs individually and for the competition overall.