Sailing Modes these days

Warning - this is a post about history!

With the aid of a Y&Y article that had a historical bent even when I was a kid, we see that there's no long-term shift towards traps among classes overall (although we can't tell whether there's a shift towards traps in adult classes with raw data). The Y&Y survey in those days looked only at adult's classes with over 50 entries in the UK nationals, plus the Olympic classes.

Looking at the 1957 numbers, we see that of the "50+ and Olympian club",  26% of boats had traps; 48% had kites; only 12% were singlehanders.

Of interest (well, to us nerds), the top 14 in '67 were N12 (180 boats), Ent (170), Firefly and Merlin (both 163), then Fireball (134), GP14, MIrror, Graduate (109), Scorp, Int 14 (89), Osprey (88), Solo (86), OK, (84) and 505 (65). There were also 49 FDs.

In 1974, which was pretty much the peak year of the dinghy boom in the UK, the top classes were the Ent (205 entries at the nats), Mirror (200), Fireball (175), GP14, Scorp, Merlin (138), Nat 12, Firefly, 505 (116, down by 1 on '73), OK, Albacore, Laser and Osprey (98). There were also 84 Fds and 78 470s. Singlehanders were still only 13% of the "50+ and Olympic" fleets.

So there were five high performance trap doublehanders with BIG fleets in the peak year. The trap boats of 470 speed or more made up 27% of the total fleet of the most popular 22 boats. By '77, the Furball was the third most popular boat on the five-year average, and the 505 was the 6th most popular, so this was not a one-off.

The average speed of the most popular adult classes was probably faster back in those days than it is today, and probably faster than it ever has been before or since - yet that was the era when the dinghy boom started to end. It's also interesting to see that the proportion of trap boats seems to stick very close to 25% over a lifetime.

It would be great to see some figures from the '90s and '00s to fill in the gaps. Well, let me rephrase that - we sailing history nerds may find it interesting!


Edited by Chris 249

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by oldarn I believe that it is the flooding of the dinghy racing sport with so many SMOD classes in the UK, that has contributed to the sad state of our club racing which is now so dominated by single handers. Yet the number of new classes being introduced now is way smaller than were being introduced at the height of the dinghy boom at the 60s... Go back to those old books of classes and you'll see what I mean... I'll see if I've got some older data but most of what I have is only since I started keeping old copies of Y&Y instead of chucking them out. Maybe I shall have to ask Gael if I can come down and root through the archives again...

Dead right about the classes. I'm looking at a 1965 Dinghy Year Book. Looking only at boats designed in the preceding six years, we see promotion material for the Zenith, Bubble, Seafly, Signet, Scorpion, Vagabond, Minisail, Mirror, Mark, Lazy E, Mermaid, Fireball and Chub, and I think some others without dates would be of the same vintage. And that's just those in one book and from one country.

There were about 137 dinghy classes with a Portsmouth yardstick at the time, which is a considerable number. It's hard to see that the strength of the sport at that time was due to having fewer classes.

 


Edited by Chris 249

Originally posted by JimC Originally posted by oldarn I believe the fastest club classes should have kites of no more than about 20m2  and PY's no lower than 900. I'm not sure, though, that things like RS800s are more difficult to sail than 505 and 14s were back in the 70s. There have been so many advances in technology, clothes and all the rest of it. Its something that strikes the more mature Skiffies, Mothies and Canoe sailors from time to time: plastic masts, gust responsive rigs, ball bearing blocks, ropes that don't stretch, even wet suits that don't remove all chance of moving quickly: all these thing make sailing the extreme boats far easier than they used to be...

I agree that such modern 'extreme' boats as the 800 are not necessarily more difficult to sail than the older extreme boats such as the 505, but the size of the kites are far larger and it is that rapid  increase in speed and change in direction to maintain controllability that causes the danger and confusion.

Originally posted by alstorer the 800 has a spinnaker comparable to the original 5o5 kite (both about 20-21 sqm); new rules 5o5 kite being about 27sqm.

Yes, but the twin trapeze puts it well into the extreme category with a PY of 820 ish

The point is all those exciting fast boats simply didn't exist in the 60s.

Having spoken to all the 60+ sailors I know they would have loved to have got their hands on some of todays kit when they were younger.

Isn't really a sensible comparison.