The 420
The fun two-man dinghy is named after its hull length, on which youth teams are prepared for the Olympic 470.
History of the
In 1959 the first prototype of a 420 was sailed on the water. After this test sailing was successful, a year later Lanaverre in France started the production in order to make this sailing fun for a wide mass of sailors possible. Today several well-known boatyards have dedicated themselves to building the 420 (Nautivela, Lenam, Baranowski, mackay, Simon Cook...). In 1971 the boat class underwent its last major change, when the spinnaker was introduced, turning the ship into a daring regatta machine.
Since then, only detail improvements have been made, such as closed decks, narrower bow lines and flatter decks, as well as changes to the set up, such as infinitely adjustable main sheet triangles.
Facts and figures
Your 420 is as the name says 4,2m long with a width of 1,63m. With a freeboard of 0.4m, the 420 is comparatively high for a youth boat and has a rather large draught of 0.97m. With a mast height of 6.26m it brings your 420 to a sail area of 10.25m² at the wind. The spinnaker with a sail area of 9.0m² provides additional propulsion on the downwind course. Despite the robust construction with closed deck and side tanks, the 420 weighs only 100kg ready to sail. The yardstick number 115, however, is only fair and comprehensible with little wind. With a lot of wind, the 420 glides quickly and can absolutely keep up with ships like the 470 on the cross as soon as it can no longer convert the pressure into speed.
Regatta
Blessed once as the youth boat par excellence for the training of future top regatta athletes, but also for the broad mass of accessible amateur sports ship with large starter fields, the registration numbers unfortunately decrease continuously. This can only be attributed to the strong competition due to the 29er. On larger regattas like the Pfingstbusch, the Kieler Woche, or championships, however, very large and above all high-class fields still meet. At championships like the German championship, the number of entries is still so high that a qualification mode has to be sailed out.