Spy photos

Hubba Hubba

That is a bit nice

http://www.rorc.org/admiralscup/history/1999/photos/krazykyo te2/default.html

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by Guest#260 They slammed the innovation with a bad rating so the French refused to race it... And of course the other issue is that too often in such rules innovations were like that mast - slow, but not as desperately slow as the measurement system thinks it is. Its not really a great way of improving the breed!

I thought it was super-quick.

I saw Krazy K-yote and her mast close up and it was truly a thing of great beauty in my opinion.

Originally posted by Guest#260 They slammed the innovation with a bad rating so the French refused to race it...

I don't think anyone actually made a case for it being a bad rating. The mast was designed to run a coach and horses through the measurement rules by being draggy, but not as desperately draggy as it looked on paper. So the measurer looked at the rule book and the book said that it was his job to give the rig a fair rating rather than stick to the letter of the measurement rule. So that's what he did, and toys were thrown out of the pram.

It was an example of a problem that often seems to hit yacht handicap rules. There's a tension between allowing innovatiuon and giving a fair rating to all boats. If the rule aims to give every boat a fair handicap then it should immediately deal with innovations that creep round the rule.

This is in contrast with box rules, where there's no question of a fair rating - if you can design a faster boat within the box then good luck.

And of course the other issue is that too often in such rules innovations were like that mast - slow, but not as desperately slow as the measurement system thinks it is. Its not really a great way of improving the breed!

Sorry Olly, you're right then, I just had my composites lecturer go off on a tangent about unstayed masts one day and he was pretty sure about the boat having an unstayed mast, even after he was questioned about it and it has sort of stuck in my mind. He must have been getting confused between Maltese Falcon and Mirabella V although he did seem to argue the point a bit.