women's skiff

Originally posted by Phil eltringham This is the same problem the 29erXX and some of the other boats at the 2007 trials have had as well.

Don't reckon so. If there was demand they'd be selling. The 49er was selling before it got Olympic status and the 29er was flying out of the shops long before it got adopted for anything. By contrast the 29erXX seems to be a boat the market doesn't want - as indeed seemed to happen to the 59er...

Come to that according to the YY Nationals stats, trapeze boats, excluding youth classes, seem to be at something like a 40 year low in popularity. Performance doesn't appear to be selling.

Edited by JimC - 02 Nov 10 at 5:27pm

If the Rebel class becomes reasonably supported, it is a class I'd buy in to in the future. When I saw her, she looked like a combination of a nice alternatives to the 800, b14 and i-14. I don't really like helming 14s as you have to steer the boat round the course which is counter intuitive as most other boats I've sailed it's all been about minimising rudder movements. The rebel sort of ticks all the i-14 boxes for me without the ball ache of a T-foil, their not difficult to use, I just don't like them. Just need to see how the performance stacks up against other classes, my gut reaction was it should nail an 800 and if the class was semi-decent, ie more than 15 boats at the nats, there is where I'd be spending my money.

It's a deep worry that ISAF may replace boats that vast amounts of people choose to sail (dinghies) with boats that (while fantastic) are only chosen by a tiny percentage of sailors.

Skiff types are just not a large proportion of centreboarders anywhere in the world bar two cities where vast sums of money from bars and one-armed bandits goes to supporting them.  Even there (Sydney and Newcastle) they are struggling - one skiff club just collapsed, about a third of the rest no longer sail skiffs.  Brisbane and Auckland have about 5 boats per class.

The plain fact is that while skiffs are wonderful, even here in Oz where they have more promotion than any other class, apart from I-14s and a 29ers (in small numbers) they are extinct or the closest thing to extinct in most parts of the country.  And that's despite skiff clubs giving them more support (probably) than the Olympic classes get. 

As Jim has already pointed out, the UK numbers show that skiff types are losing popularity. It's similar elsewhere - just 15 I-14s at the US nationals this year, for example. 

Menace, you make some good points but I think you'll find the reason there are so few new skiff types is because very few of them have been successful since that initial spurt of popularity. Given the choice of sailing a 49er, 4000, 8000, B14 whatever, an increasing number of sailors are moving away from high performance crewed centreboarders altogether.

Skiffs are fantastic, but the plain, simple, unadorned truth which should be impossible to ignore is that they attract FEWER sailors than other types, even in the country which has had them for 120 years, and that if we focus on them as the way forward we could seriously harm our sport.

As for getting more TV  at the Olympics - we had Tornadoes with kites, RSXs and 49ers in big winds at the last Games and sailing still got out-rated by people swimming at 4 knots and guys rowing on flat water at 8 knots.  Assuming that fast boats will attract viewers just isn't working, just like the 18 Foot Skiff Grand Prix didn't attract enough viewers, just like the Extreme cat series, ProSail, Ultras, Ultimates, etc didn't attract enough viewers to stay alive (or keep their title sponsor, in the VX 40's case).


Edited by Chris 249 - 02 Nov 10 at 9:20pm

Originally posted by RS400atC Not many people choose to sail 470's

But they do... 125 470s built in 2009 worldwide, 818 in the last 5 years, 95 boats at the 2009 mens worlds from 29 countries, 57 boats from 24 countries at the women's worlds, and 54 boats from 23 countries at the Junior Worlds.

If you were to add together the numbers for *every* twin string class in the world together I'd be quite suprised if they matched those totals...

Edited by JimC - 02 Nov 10 at 10:05pm

Personally I can't see it getting selected over the RS 800.

Having sailed an 800 with the re-designed cockpit I was hugely impressed with what a lovely boat to sail it actually is. 

I'm also always staggered at what a turn of speed, and the amount of power, the 800 produces with sails far smaller than that of an i-14 or 49er, so I could see this Rebel possibly slightly over canvassed for the target weight range. 

Saying that I think it looks really great and would love to see a Women's fast double hander along side the 49er at the olympics.

As always just my opinon!