A new class of dinghy?

Originally posted by iGRF Originally posted by turnturtle It's a nice idea guys.... carpe diem! YOLO! Buy it now, bury me in it later!   But then I guess both of you have paid off your mortgages, put your kids through uni / schools or whatever and aren't carrying the can for a national debt not caused by the generations above you ;-) You certainly aren't really needing to worry too much about an inevitable Corbyn Government coming in to destroy your generations's entrepreneurial spirit, increase taxes and kill off any desire to push society further forward - phased by self doubt that the generations coming next will be poorer than the ones before them for the first time in centuries.    And the worst of it is, it's totally understandable.  Jezza will be elected off the backs of a younger generation who feel out of options - sold out to pay for your equity release schemes and pension offloads to pay for that 30k boat- to hell with your care bills that come down the line.   Money never truly earned from your labours- just market forces on cheap property booms never to be seen again.  Young people left with the choice between an 8 x income level mortgage or an equally usury 60+% wage rental bill for single bedroom flats.... that's what's actually paying for those boats.  Or are you suggesting that you'll put a few hours in Tesco overnight stacking shelves buying said boat block and tackle piecemeal? Anyway, all rather gloomy and political.... enough to make you dance about on stage like to total f**king clown in elation at the prospect.  But thank goodness your generation didn't vote away the rights of young people to escape it all too.... oh, hang on.   ;-)   Oh dear the price of starch increased has it? That's a fine piece of snowflake BS coming from a two homed executive living the dream.. Personally I could give a tinkers cuss to the latterday pussyboy and girl no hope generation of self entitled no marks. My lot endured rationing until we were seven and I think I was eight before I even experienced a banana, we roamed bomb sites as our playgrounds and worked from the moment we were able. Paper rounds, menial jobs whatever we could do to scratch a living, working with closed shops, unions, three day weeks, strikes inflation at 20%, then booms and busts at regular interval, making and losing small fortunes as the markets also waxed and waned, housing price collapses anyone remember Anthony Barber, and that other idiot Lawson was it? Then that exchange rate debacle under Major cost me three hundred grand as Sorus shorted sterling. We voted labour to get a swing of the pendulum back against the outrages of capitalism and what did we get? Blair, Brown and more of the same until the next financial disaster. No, we've paid our dues and if the youth of today have any sense they'll deliver Corbyn and it'll be everything the b**tards deserve. As long as I can encourage the Taxman to keep on provding me with boats I'll keep quoting that apt saying from our generation.. I'm alright Jack.

Blimey, another one who could benefit from a slice of rump and a knob snog.

Love you Grumpf... finally a worthy response, and someone who gets a little irony... although I did quite like H2's dongchuggin' one liner, quite refreshing for the sallow halls of a dinghy forum.   Mike's 'put down the keyboard quips' when that's exactly where he's sat do get a little irksome... but hey, it's standard operating procedure so we come to expect it.    

Originally posted by H2 KazRob - disagree about "in our life times". I am 45 so have at least 30 years more sailing in front of me. Wind the world back 30 years.....quite a bit has changed so I am fairly sure that it will be possible in the foreseeable future.

Edited by Chris 249 - 04 Oct 18 at 12:32am

An interesting thread. Many of the clubs in my part of the world are in dire straits - Kids do a year or two in Optimists and move on to something else before they achieve competence leaving a declining fleet and aging leadership group.

The need that dinghy sailing has above all others is to engage people in sailing and to keep them. Instead of dreaming up marginally faster and trickier boats we need boats that address the needs of people who live in flats and are worried about launching their careers, or their childrens'.

To address those 'customer' needs we need boats which are (1) short enough to stand on their transoms in the garage and leave space for a car (2) have adequate performance, ie plane carrying an adult and (3) allow young people to build their boats and thus write on their skinny CVs "sport = sailing, hobby = boat building - I sail the boat I built."

To quote one of our local house builders, "If a kid finishes his boat and wants an apprenticeship, send him to me..." That kind of affirmation will keep people interested long enough to take on the identity of sailor and once they identify as sailors, they will stay sailors.

Sam Spoons, thank you for that. Have you tried sailing one?

An old bloke arrived at our club with the brand new Pdracer he had built for his grand kids. He wanted somebody to try it out before he presented it to them. I was the bunny who was deputised. It was the absolute worst design I have experienced in 60 years of dinghy sailing.

The mast was so heavy that the boat rolled like a demented pendulum. It had that strange rig with which Storer designed the PDR - a luff down to the forward tank blocking a large sector of visibility completely and the fixed rudder meant you had to drag the thing out into waist deep water before you could install it.

Storer used to sail at our club "before my time" and I am very interested in his later designs including Beth and Viola but neither meets the storage criteria I identified and both require scarf joints which would test a novice. A PDR with the lug rig and a pivoting or dagger rudder might be a different experience but for now I am very doubtful about the original version.