V Twin

remember the v twin is sick at the moment with a big gash in its bottom from grf raming it on the beach

Why not? Feeding trolls is fun, at least until it bites your arm off...

I assume the V2 is still damaged from its meeting with the beach, so it will have been the Alt0 out this weekend?

GRF has gone a little quiet over the last few days, though?

After a weekend of sun and wind where are all the tales of the mighty twin smashing up the sad old designs from the muppet dinghy world ... or is the twin still struggling to keep upright/beat a poorly sailed Laser 2000

Originally posted by Presuming Ed Originally posted by Chris 249 Originally posted by Presuming Ed Originally posted by pondmonkey Fair points- but the weight game for elite sporting products has changed since Torbole.   I guess I'm saying the 49er hull seems to have stood the test of time- relative to the pace of technology-change in other aspects of our lives.   People have known about carbon for ages - well before the trials. IIRC from the dinghy show, Rodney P was playing with carbon and honeycomb in his FDs. Wikipedia tells us that honeycomb sandwich construction was proposed in 1915. Tecnara built Tag Heuer in 1992, just to prove that the boatshop floor isn't a labatory... Downside of carbon is the cost.  I'm not having a go at you, but as far as I know in many equipment sports the "weight game" restrictions have stayed pretty much the same. Do you know of many in which the weights have dropped much? BTW the earliest carbon boat I can find evidence was a Parker Contender, from '68 IIRC. There was a fairly detailed article about it at the time. I was simply pointing out that the 49er hull wasn't cutting edge tech when it came out (and righly so, IMHO).

Originally posted by RS400atC The only thing I can see wrong is people's attitude to learning to sail (and race) in a tatty old boat, both from the participants and other competitors. When we spend thousands on a new boat, we are putting a barrier, at least psychologically, in front of those who are not committed enough, or able,  to spend as much. Maybe age related PY's might help. Maybe magazine that wrote abote people getting out there and improving with old boats. Instead of promoting the latest all the time. Maybe class associations making more effort to encompass the budget racer.

We use age and state of tune handicaps at cvrda events, and they work very well, but then the point of the association is to promote the sailing of old and knackered boats, as well as beautifully respored classics. However, I'm not totally convinced this should happen in mainstream racing. A better way is what some enlightened CA's do, which is to create a classic fleet. Some classes have been more successful than others. I'm not sure what the ideal way of clubs coping with it during handicap racing is, really. Maybe a classic handicap fleet with results extrapolated from the main results? But some classes get outdated rather sooner than others, so who decides what a classic is?