For sailors looking for new trailerable keelboat options today there are a handful of great options, including the J/7, the Storm 18, and now RS Sailing’s Aira 22, a new addition to its “adventure range.”

This versatile open cockpit keelboat was originally designed and built by Aira Boats in the Netherlands, but the UK’s RS Sailing has taken on the Aira 22’s build, distribution, marketing and sales.

“As we continue to grow our presence in the leisure sailing market, the RS Aira 22 embodies our commitment to expanding the sport of sailing beyond competitive racing and into the realm of family-friendly adventure,” says RS Sailing’s Commercial Director, Michiel Geerling.

For the past ten years, alongside its dinghy range, RS Sailing has expanded its offerings for recreational sailors and community sailing operations with its bigger boats, such as the Quest, Toura (a past Sailing World Boat of the Year finalist as Best Dinghy), and RS Venture, but Geerling says: “As market interest in daysailing grew, we recognized a need to add a larger vessel to our line-up—a flagship keelboat that merges comfort, performance and accessibility.”

According to RS, the 22-footer “draws inspiration from the daysailer tradition in the Netherlands, where families frequently enjoy time on the water in boats that are both practical and comfortable.”

“It is a nice balance of sport and leisure, and, of course, we will be adding our own RS stamp on it,” Geerling says.

For Sailing Schools, Families and Adventurous Outings

The original Aira 22 was launched in 2018 by Jos Snijders Blok, founder of Aira Boats. The boat was designed for recreational sailors and gained popularity with sailing schools and boat rental centers in the Netherlands. As Snijders eyed retirement, he approached RS Sailing to bring the boat to a much wider market.

“The Aira 22 has always stood out as a smart and innovative boat,” Geerling says. “We’re thrilled to now be able to expand its reach and introduce it to a global audience. The RS Aira 22 is truly the future of accessible and enjoyable sailing. We will ensure that Jos’ legacy lives on while sharing this exceptional product with day sailors worldwide.”

The daysailer is designed with ergonomics and safety in mind, “offering an open cockpit, higher boom, ample storage space, and comfortable seating options, complete with cushions,” the builder says. The boat also features options for a foldable table and a retractable built-in ePropulsion electric engine. Another great option is and outboard bracket to accommodate a small outboard (gas or electric).

As to its performance, Snijders says, “We often describe the Aira as a comfort-focused boat with the sleek lines of a modern sportboat.”

Its design features contribute to its versatility, and especially its stability, which comes from 7 feet of beam, a flat bottom, a wide stern, and a powerful square-top mainsail. In essence, it has all the fundamentals of a well-rounded daysailor and low-key class racer.

“There is a real need to engage more people in sailing, especially families,” explains Geerling says. “The RS Aira 22 is something for the whole family. Its versatility means that one day it is a daysailer and the next day it could be a club racer. The hull design ensures effortless planing, while the 300-square-foot gennaker elevates the boat into a powerhouse of fun. It strikes the ideal balance between comfort and performance.

Priced with three sails and gennaker furler, covers, cushions and a stainless steel outboard bracket to accommodate and electric outboard, and trailer, the Aira 22 (with shipping) hits just shy of $50,000. Various color schemes are available should you want to customize the look of your nex adventure.

The post RS Sailing Adds the Aira 22 For Adventuring and Racing appeared first on Sailing World.

When the time comes for Boat of the Year judge Chuck Allen to test the RS Cat 14XL, he jumps on board and quickly organizes ropes and control lines before cinching the chin strap of his goofy hat with a long neck flap. He pushes off from the Highfield RIB and looks upwind for the next big gust. The catamaran’s tall heavy-duty mainsail fills, and he leans forward, snugs the jib sheet and jets away, with rooster tails spitting from the roto-molded transoms of the catamaran. Soon, the weather hull is skimming above the surface and the boat is in perfect balance. Flying along at speed with ease and grace, Allen’s cap flap is streaming behind his head. He’s perched in the weather hull’s concave seat, comfy and cruising with a cool-guy cat-sailor pose.

He’s digging the experience, as is RS Sailing representative and professional cat sailor Todd Riccardi, who says the $11,000 RS Cat 14XL is a recreational beach cat that’s not just for youth sailors. It’s big fun for big kids too. “It has a sweet groove upwind,” Allen says. “For a 14-foot roto-molded boat, it really hums along. I had no problem climbing to weather once it got going, and when you get the weight in the right place, the weather hull just skimming, it’s really fast.”

Recreational sailing is RS Sailing’s wheelhouse, so much of the design and hardware consideration went toward making the RS Cat 14 a versatile platform to start with. The standard boat has a main and jib, and the XL brings a spinnaker, trapezes and a lot more sizzle. Its wave-piercing bows work excellent in short chop, so it’s a forgiving ride, and an aluminum spreader bar prevents the bows from flexing, a problem common to catamarans. If there’s one thing to be said of the boat, Stewart says, it’s that it’s stiff. Integration of the crossbeams and reinforcements at load-bearing locations in the hulls keeps it all tight.

Rigging the boat and handling the sail controls is child’s play. With a single-line hoist for the spinnaker, you simply pull the halyard a few times, and up it goes. Same in reverse. Simple 2-to-1 jib sheets, spinnaker sheets and a 6-to-1 cunningham will keep a forward crew entertained while the skipper has a mainsheet and traveler led from the aft beam.

The traveler can essentially be left alone, Allen says, because fun is apparent-wind sailing. With the Cat 14XL, you’ll be sailing higher angles, so you can set and forget it — most of the time. Judge Tom Rich learned this on his first go. Downwind, in strong breeze, if you ease the main too far, bad things happen. Things like pitch-poles. “If you ease the main too much downwind, it pressures the top of the sail and encourages a pitch-pole,” Riccardi says.

After being plucked from the water, Rich confesses that his “epic capsize” only happened because he was hot-dogging for his fellow judges.

“It’s a fun boat to sail,” he says. “I think I had it going upwind pretty good, with the hull up and going really fast. It feels great. But downwind, I struggled to find a comfortable place to drive and trim the chute at the same time. With practice, I’m sure I would be much better. It’s well laid out, easy to sail and peppy enough in the light winds.

Rich’s capsize recovery, however, is a challenge for the team’s senior judge. He douses the spinnaker from the water, climbs on board and hangs like hell on the righting line, with no avail. The flotation pod at the top of the aluminum mast is doing its job, preventing the boat from turtling. He tries righting it several times more before resorting to sliding back into the water and swimming the bows into the wind. Problem solved.

When it’s his turn, Allen keeps the boat upright, and only ­relinquishes the helm when forced to do so. “I can see someone going out and sailing this boat all day long,” he says. “When it’s windy, you’re going to want to sail it all day long, just sending it. Even with just the main and jib, it’s plenty fast. You really don’t even need to hike, so you don’t have to work hard to go fast. Just play the sail, lock it in and fly hull.”

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A s finely crafted, enjoyable to sail and otherwise perfect as the RS21 may be, there is one problem. For it to become the next popular keelboat, yacht clubs and sailors beholden to ancient local fleets must step up and embrace change. Today, there is a better boat to set the hook deeper into these sailors, and that boat is the RS21. This a club racer first. A one-design second.

While the RS21 is a high-tolerance one-design keelboat, its list of potential uses is long. It’s ideal for athletic match racers and team racers. It’s a weeknight beer-can racing machine that comes from the factory fitted with all the hardware necessary to switch between asymmetric and symmetric spinnakers. RS Sailing promotes this 21-footer as a “team boat,” meaning everyone can and will be involved in the sailing, and they’re right.

There’s elbow room for a crew of four or five, and the right amount of strings to pull. Jib-tack height is adjustable during setup, using a purchase system that’s covered by a Velcro flap to prevent the spinnaker from snagging the forestay turnbuckle. The jib has hanks, and with the cutout foredeck, a less-than-nimble bowperson can easily go forward without fear of falling overboard.

There’s a large recessed hatch, and when it’s open, one can behold the beauty of the boat’s cored vinylester laminate. The core material is recycled plastic that provides a noticeable amount of panel stiffness for its weight. It’s not an excessively thick laminate, Tom Rich says, but it’s solid to the tap test. Should the boat be totaled in an unforeseen disaster, it can be ground to bits and reused as material for the next boat. A Torqeedo battery is accessible through the foredeck hatch, and there’s room to store rolled sails inside. There’s even a pre-installed through-deck fitting for wiring mast-mounted electronics.

The Selden carbon rig (aluminum boom) is easy to tune from the turnbuckles, between races, as with other keelboats. Both the jib and main halyard exit from the mast and hook into fine-tune purchase systems, which allows draft adjustments on the fly and eliminates struggles common to horn cleats. The cunningham and vang are not led outboard, but each is reachable from the legs-in hike position. Jib leads are 2-to-1, with adjustment stops on short transverse tracks. All-in-all, the judges say the RS21’s simple front-of-the-boat layout won’t intimidate inexperienced crews, but the ability to easily play with sail shape will appeal to more advanced tweakers.

The judges also agreed on one thing after several hours of sailing in midrange wind conditions: The boat is not dumbed down or too difficult. It will reward acute awareness of weight placement, an understanding of what mode is best for the moment and, of course, smooth boathandling. “The balance of the helm is really nice,” Greg Stewart says. “It never wants to wipe out, and the [North] sails are good. It’s built well, and I would recommend it to anyone. I’m scratching my head to come up with anything wrong with it.”

For efficient boathandling, control lines and sheet angles are good, and the center pod is an unexpected asset. Critics will pan the fiberglass structure and its “granny bar” as ugly, but it does serve purposes, primarily to house the Torqeedo electric outboard when it’s stowed and raised (when stowed, a fiberglass panel door lies flush to the hull). The pod also allows the RS21 to use a split mainsheet so one crewmember can take over from the helmsman. The stainless-steel grab provides an excellent balance point for the helmsman when crossing the boat, which senior club members will appreciate. The youngins’, no doubt, will use it to put extra energy into every roll tack.

RELATED: New Boat: RS 21

Cockpit ergonomics are excellent for a boat this size. There’s comfortable upright sitting against lifelines, with beveled corners in the deck. “It’s got the low freeboard, the reverse bow, the chamfers forward and the chine back aft, so it definitely has the look of a modern boat,” Stewart says. “It’s amazing how stable it is. When we put four guys on one side deck and tried to heel it at the dock it barely moved. I felt that same stability when sailing. It feels like a big boat more than it does a dinghy.”

Allen agrees, adding, “I liked it a lot. All the adjustments and everything were handy at the mast, and the backstay and everything else were nicely led.”

“Upwind, when the crew weight is in the right spot, it makes a huge difference on the load on the helm,” Allen says. It’s like a Viper in that it has the same feel. But with the RS21, if you’re racing it, you want to be dead flat or have a bit of weather heel. It has a fine groove, and when you’re in it, you know it. Downwind sailing is easy with this thing when the leech-twist profiles match.”

Sailing it may be easy, but the true challenge, Rich says, will be selling a $40,000 boat to yacht clubs. “It’s a problem with the demographics of the clubs themselves,” he says. “The members who can afford these boats are older, perhaps too old for these types of boats. Is it too sporty or too wet for the 60-year-old member?”

Perhaps, but it’s right on target for next-generation members groomed in performance boats, so it’s a question of whether senior members are willing to invest in the future of their club fleet by giving younger members a reason to belong, beyond the bar, the ballroom or the pool.

The post RS21: 2019 Keelboat appeared first on Sailing World.

According to a news release from England’s RS Sailboats, New RS21 is aimed to “to help bring popularity back to keelboat racing.”

RS Sailboats, winner of multiple Sailing World Boat of the Year awards over the past few years has certainly become the most progressive builder of new dinghies and small keelboats. They’re integrated into many sailing programs in Europe and the United States, and with direct feedback from program directors, they’re listening to what new and experienced sailors desire, and this boat, they say, is the result of exhaustive development.

The price range is the “mid-30s” with asymmetric spinnaker package (plus inbound freight), says RS’s Riki Hooker, but that’s not a firm price, yet. “The RS21 keelboat responds to the need for a progressive, simple and affordable solution for keelboat clubs that increasingly see the opportunity for fleet ownership, league competition and training,” says Hooker.

We look forward to sailing the boat in when it arrives in the States later this year, but until then, here’s he new-boat announcement straight from the source:

Development of the boat was inspired by direct approach to RS Sailing by several leading keelboat programs. The design puts close racing over ultimate performance – convenient ownership over complexity – it maximizes low maintenance and value. This is the boat to bring wider availability, enjoyment and popularity back to keelboat racing.

The RS21 is both high quality and a sound financial proposition. Realistic costs allow appealing club charter fees – or affordable investment by syndicates of sailing friends. Team up and do it together.

RS Sailing’s sustainability focus means the RS21 also leads the way in terms of eco-friendly construction, with the hull built at Cowes on the Isle of Wight using bio-derived resins and recycled core materials. The deck design and lifting or removable keel system facilitate stacking for freight and travel efficiency. An optional rechargeable and retractable electric propulsion system is also integrated into the design. This boat is all about the future of sailing, in all its aspects.

RS 21 Stats

LOA 6.34m – Beam 2.2m – Draft 1.38m

No-hiking rule

2-part carbon fiber mast – for convenient storage and transport

Retractable carbon composite bowsprit

One Design and Club sails specification options

Optional symmetrical spinnaker

Optional integrated, rechargeable & retractable electric sail-drive propulsion

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