Sailing Sideways: How To Become A Double World Champion In Different Boats

Written by Hari Clark.

This summer, I was lucky enough to win the Tera Sport World Championships, surprisingly making me the first person to be a double World Champion in both a Topper and a Tera. It seems strange to me how few sailors consider competing in these two single-handed dinghy classes. To me, it seemed a natural choice. In the summer of 2024 having won the Topper 4.2 Worlds at Mar Menor, I weighed only 30kg. This is light, even for a Topper 4.2, but even then I knew that I’d probably still be too small to be internationally competitive in the full Topper 5.3 rig by summer 2025 (recommended weight range about 45–65kg). Doing the same thing again next year in a 4.2 rig was also not appealing, as that seemed like standing still. So what to do? The problem was solved within minutes of winning at Mar Menor last year. Even as my dad hauled the Topper back to the boat park with Dave, the Draycote manager, Dave said “Next year Tera Sport World Champion?”

The immediate concerns were many. We haven’t got a boat! No-one else I know sails a Tera! Draycote Academy doesn’t even do Tera training! These problems were all gradually overcome. Luckily, Draycote had recently been made RYA Club of the Year, which included the loan of some Aero and Tera boats (though the rigging supplied for the Teras was very basic). There were also plans to set-up the Draycote Tera Academy to start that Autumn, with sailors coming from all over the country to be trained by the legendary Steve Irish. So after a couple of outings in a Tera, I took part in the 2024 End of Seasons national Tera event, coming fifth. Clearly, much more training was needed over winter and spring.

I knew that being a Topper World Champion would not make it easy to win in a Tera Sport. The Tera Sport class is completely different from the Topper 4.2. Tera sailors often start 2–3 years younger than their Topper counterparts, probably because of a smaller sail (as well as being able to use the even smaller mini-sail). So the top Sport sailors often have at least 5 or 6 years’ sailing experience, giving the fleet great depth, with national events attracting large fleets by junior sailing standards.

Taking all these factors into account my training for the 2025 Tera Sport Worlds focused on the following:

1. The boat. Changing the controls so they were improved for racing, first in the club boat, and then buying a second-hand boat and making further changes to the rigging until I was confident that it suited me. Also, having spares for everything (as in the 9 months’ build-up to the Worlds I broke pretty much every boat part, some more than once).
2. In-boat training. This included training by Draycote Academy in a Tera (as well as continuing to train in a Topper too), as well as sailing on my own at Draycote to cement lessons from coaching. Practice on my own helped to perfect technical aspects of sailing a Tera. Maximising time on the water was key. This includes messing about with sailing mates – it all helps!
3. Racing. As much racing as possible, including Tera Travellers in the South West, regular club racing at Draycote, even Midlands Topper Traveller events in a 5.3 rig. Anything to practice racing.
4. Fitness. Doing some fitness and strength training. Being a smaller sailor in particular means that you have to be fitter than many other sailors as you will have to work harder and longer to go fast in stronger wind. My fitness helped me to win the Topper Nationals at Weymouth last year in extremely windy conditions against sailors weighing quite a bit more than me (some of whom had complained that I won the Worlds in moderate winds because I was light – you can’t have it both ways guys!).
5. Reading and learning to develop techniques and strategies. Looking at on-line stuff to see how top sailors race. Also reading some of the excellent series on sailing by Fernhurst Books for some great tips and insights. Finally, during the winter I go to a local chess club, as I believe that this helps with mental aspects of sailing such as strategic thinking, mental agility, and decision-making under pressure. In sailing, as in chess, you need to analyse the situation, predict where other people will move, plan ahead, and adapt to changes.

My advice to other sailors is to not rush to a faster boat or larger rig, but make sure you are the right weight and size for your class of boat. Often the easiest thing to do is to follow your sailing friends as they move up to faster boats, but you do not need to rush down the well-trodden path that most other youth and junior sailors follow if it is not right for you now. It is very important to try to master one boat class at a time before moving on, if this is possible. In this way you will get many useful skills to take with you to your next boat. It is also good to avoid staying in one class for too long. For example, there are lots of quite large older sailors who squeeze into Optimists, who then finally transition straight into an ILCA 4. Increasingly, some Optimist sailors move across to sail a Tera or a Topper before moving into an ILCA, and perhaps this is no bad thing.

Finally, you do not have to be winning everything to have fun. And often you learn more from coming second than coming first. On this point, it is also important to take responsibility for poor performances. Only by taking responsibility for mistakes can you improve. Parents can help here too. They should not make excuses for poor results (winds were too light or too heavy, my child is too big or too small compared with the winning sailors, we have an old boat, and so on), as this stops the sailor from ‘owning’ the result. After all, if their child won, the parent would not normally say that the good result was because of the sailors boat or weight – so why should the opposite be true?

Taking my own advice, much as I would like to move into an ILCA 4 like many of my friends, in the coming year I will be training and racing in both a Tera Pro and Topper 5.3. By next year, I think that my anticipated weight and height, and developing skill levels, will give me a chance of performing well in these classes. As yet though, I’m not sure which boat will be the main focus for me. But it will be interesting to find out.