Nature or nurture

   That maybe so Jim, but by all accounts an early Finn with a wooden mast was an absolute pig to sail but somehow in becoming faster its now transformed into a veritable gentlemens refined singlehander. Is it faster? Yes. Is it 'better' - judging by numbers now sailed at non-Olympic level - yes

Author	Message Share Topic Printable Version Delicious Digg Facebook Furl Google MySpace Newsvine reddit StumbleUpon Translate Twitter Windows Live Yahoo Bookmarks Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic
KazRob Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Far too distracted from work Joined: 22 Oct 16 Location: Scotland Online Status: Offline Posts: 245	Post Options Post Reply Quote KazRob Report Post Quote Reply Topic: Nature or nurture Posted: 30 Aug 17 at 10:44pm
	That maybe so Jim, but by all accounts an early Finn with a wooden mast was an absolute pig to sail but somehow in becoming faster its now transformed into a veritable gentlemens refined singlehander. Is it faster? Yes. Is it 'better' - judging by numbers now sailed at non-Olympic level - yes
	OK 2249 D-1 138

JimC Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Visit Member's Homepage Really should get out more Joined: 17 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6662	Post Options Post Reply Quote JimC Report Post Quote Reply Posted: 30 Aug 17 at 10:17pm
	Thing is, the development in any class over the years isn't to make it 'better', whatever better is, it's to make it better at winning races within the rule set. Faster clearly isn't better, at least in terms of popularity, because the fastest boats aren't the most popular. And you can tweak to your hearts content, but it does't matter how much makeup you put on a pig, its still a pig. On the other hand if a boat is fundamentally rubbish, who's going to put the effort in? Edited by JimC - 30 Aug 17 at 10:44pm

KazRob Send Private Message Find Member's Posts Far too distracted from work Joined: 22 Oct 16 Location: Scotland Online Status: Offline Posts: 245	Post Options Post Reply Quote KazRob Report Post Quote Reply Posted: 30 Aug 17 at 9:44pm
	A recent post by the normally controversial iGRF praising the Phantom has had me thinking. How much of a boat's appeal (when it is actually sailed) is down to the genius of the designer and how much is down to tweaks, modernisation and developments over the years. I'm firmly in the camp that thinks that development and tweaks over the years can make a good basic boat design boat great to sail. If the Phantom had been a SMOD would it still have appeal today? Or indeed are we seeing boats like the RS400, which was once thought of as a 'modern' Merlin, being slowly made to look old fashioned by the new Merlins with raking carbon rigs? Of course I'm not really opening the discussion of whether restricted classes are better than SMODs but more whether the middle ground of slowly tweaked one designs makes the boats better in the long run (and should the SMODs move that way in time)
	OK 2249 D-1 138