Symmetrical Spinnakers

It's rather a sign of a flawed design for a racing boat that they have to introduce rules to prevent you using the equipment provided to best advantage to sail round the course. It also directly contradicts the requirement to sail your "Proper course"!

People would think it rather bizarre if you weren't allowed to let the mainsail out to go downwind on the grounds that it made the boat go faster and make the racing less tactical .... I can't see any difference between that and the Feva rule of not goosewinging the kite!

 

 

the 200's banned the use of the wisker pole for goose winging at class events because it spoilt the tactical racing as it became a prosession. If i remember correctly there was nothing to stop u doing it pole less but that took alot of effort and was just plane difficult.

How strange that the class that came in with the "square running system" splashed across it's advertisments now bans it?! Of course, anyone handicap racing can do as they please, but it is most odd. Puts me off the class, really.

This is all very interesting. I always find at least as many tactics (even if different ones) square running as gybing downwind. One class I sail goes square in light stuff and then gybes through up to 90 degrees in a breeze, so there's an unusual chance to see both in action in the same fleet.

I also notice that even in conventional boats like Lasers and Tasars, the top guys seem to have an uncanny knack of moving right through the fleet with superior tactics (diving low at just the right time, etc) down those "straight line non-tactical" reaches and square runs. Maybe the tactics of reaching and running square are just as important but more subtle than those of gybing downwind and therefore not always seen as easily?

One thing that gets me about gybing downwind is that a boat that has to sail high angles can be (in light winds at least) a bit frustrating, just like sailing a boat that won't point upwind (although not so bad). Always trying to "soak" the boat down and not being able to anywhere near the mark before you start to lose pressure isn't always fun to all of us. In light winds I'd personally sooner sail a boat that run pretty square so I can work little angles, puffs and the fleet near me (partly because you lose less gybing through 10 degrees to chase puffs, than you do through gybing through 90 degrees).

But obviously the 200s and Fevas don't see it like that.

Interesting.


Edited by CT249

In general the more distance lost when turning corners the less tactical the class as you can't affort to keep changing direction.

That dosn't mean the class isn't tactical it just shifts the emphasis ...

Of course in the faster classes the winners are the guys who can manouver well so they can be more tactical than the corner bangers...