The World's best race boat

Here is what SA wrote about the I14 when they awarded it the best race boat category. Seems to me that last point is then one evry class is looking for. Touch it and your hooked........

International 14 dinghy class today seems like a great fix for fast boat blues.  The class is solid, the competition can be found in many places, including Japan and Hawaii, the class managed to control the boat’s development while allowing its member to play with the foiling systems that allowed the crews to try different options with the rig and sails.  It seems to be that everyone who touches this dinghy gets really excited about racing it and that puts it on top of our list.

This whole debate shows up the futility of the best/worst debate. Freddie may be right - it may be the 505, for Freddie. For me, I'll live with the rude comments of ignorant people, I'll live with the logistical nightmare of getting the boat under cover to work on it, and I'll live with not having fleet racing at my club and small fleets at Opens. Why? Because NOTHING feels like an FD! Sure there are faster boats, and boats with bigger fleets (even one or two faster boats with bigger fleets!) but no other boat gives me the same feeling.

If there was a "best", surely everyone would sail that? Best for me is not the same as best for Freddie, but both our opinions are valid. I guess we would use different criteria, so that might lead to another thread: How do we choose the classes we sail? What is important and what is completely irrelevant?

Neil

Well Im not certain about THE best but the Topper has done very well considering it is generally childrens first boat they learn to sail in and the fleet is now 250+  who race competitively and the top end of the fleet are awesome sailors....even though they have the most experience in a Topper they are so good that they can jump in pretty much anything and you see them performaing well after a bit of practice.

Yup - sorry all, I hadn't intended my comments to end up as a development vs smod thing.  There are clearly good and bad on each side of the equation.

My definition of the word "race" was about a boat being able to perform across the wind-range.  At all points of sailing.  And a boat that challenges crews both tactically and on straight line speed.

To be fair, most SMOD designs (my opinion only, please note...!) tend to have a hole in their performance somewhere.  So if you take the 29er - clearly the light wind performance isn't the same as that of heavier breeze - same as a 420. 

Look at a 49er/musto skiff/700 and the like, and you see capsizes allowed for in the handicap..!

That to me is why fireballs/505's and FD's are more thoroughbred performers - usually a result of a more flexible / adjustable rig, and several decades of development.

Also, SMODs can't have it both ways.  Their marketing always alludes to....bang for buck...., so it does stand to reason that for greater cost you will probably get more thoroughbred kit.

Appreciate that this is my view only...!

CW

Well given that SA is an American site and there were no USA boats at the fireball worlds it makes it kind of unlikely the fireball would of won.

In fact most of the sailors Ive spoken to in the USA have hardly herd of the Fireball although they have all herd of the FD and 5o5.

And as somone said above, anything that can get Americans exited about dinghy sailing has to be doing things right