Fastest dinghy?

Originally posted by Chris 249

   Hey Simon, while there's little doubt the cats fly around a course,
don't be so sure they're much faster downwind than a big skiff.

It's hard to say without seeing a T up against a big skiff, which I
haven't done for a while, but compared to a board they both seem
similar in pace. A cat sailor I know (a top skipper in Taipan 4.9s,
arguably the fastest 16' cat around, and about 5th in the F 18 worlds
as crew) reckons a Cherub can beat a Taipan downwind in a breeze. 

A couple of times when I've been cat racing I've taken the board out
before or during races. It's much easier to stay with the cats than it
is to stay with the 16' skiffs down the bay. Of course, the speed of a
board v a boat varies enormously depending whether we're powered up or
not. In about 10 knots, the 16' skiffs seem similar upwind to the IMCO
board, but the IMCO board is slower upwind than a Nacra 14 sq (baby
Inter 17) sailed by a world A Class champs runner-up. Downwind, the
board is slightly quicker than the Nacra, way slower than the 16'
skiff. And the 16 is only about as fast as a 14' skiff.

In a good hard breeze, even my old slalom board can blow away a good A
Class downwind (and when I say "good", I'm talking about an A fleet
that attracts guys like 3 time world A champ and current F18 world
champ) yet in the downwind race on the bay, FW boards are similar in
pace to an 18' skiff. The FW boards would blow my slalom board off the
water on a square run.

Many years ago, the Tornadoes (some with kites) raced the 18s and a C
Class cat. The first T was just 17 seconds ahead of the first 18. Sure,
the Ts have improved since then, but so did the 18s. In fact the top
18's chaseboat (IIRC) measured the 18's speed down the squares as
faster than the C C lass (Victoria 150, the world's best at the time).

OTOH, I do know T sailors who reckon they kill 18s. Then again, those
same T sailors reckon their yardstick with the new rig should only be 3
points faster than the "classic" rig; so either they're exxagerating
the speed improvement or they're talking B.S. to the yardstick guys.

I'm not saying the cats don't fly upwind, but have you lined up against a good 49er or 18 downwind? You may be surprised.

And of course, when it gets to real smallboat speed nothing comes close
to a board (apart from YPE which is strictly a flat-water one way
machine, which is only fractionally quicker than a board that can sail
both ways and in rough water).