Personally a dead end but other opinions undoubtedly differ.

For me sailing is at heart a simple pursuit and the more complicated it becomes the less it appeals. Sounds a bit plinky plunky but lots of extras are a distraction from the "mindfullness" of "doing sailing". 

edit add: it seems I'm not so do different as do what I like and ignore the latest must have.

 

Lifting the windward foil sounds very dangerous, they don’t have any pictures I can find on the website. 

140kg 14ft boat?

Sure it is a fantastic boat to sail but minimal market potential, Foiling is very old hat now and still not taken up by a major dinghy manufacturer. 

It’s does seem unnecessarily heavy for a modern boat . Is it a all in weight including foils and mast ? 

You probably didn’t notice it, there appears to a a dagger board in front of the mast, look at video at about 50seconds. Probably not as odd as it sounds as there is probably a lot of rudder area in displacement mode. 

Didn’t always work.  Chapman developed the Marauder powerboat.  The aft end of the prop shaft was supported by the rudder stock heel fitting.  When the boat went astern the prop shaft went out of true and would break.

Wasn't a great strategy for Lotus team drivers

It's the same capitalist dream that killed windsurfing, first grass roots racing and then the sport as a whole. It's almost entirely manufacturer led as they need to sell you something new every year.

You're right, DD, but the level of attention that sailing media spends on the AC and other exotica has clearly changed dramatically, and we can check the numbers.

I also ride bikes and the difference is that the bike mags are promoting gravel bikes you and I can easily buy and ride outside our front door, whereas the sailing media is now promoting dinghies that cost as much as a full year's average income and which can't be used at many venues. 

When our sport was booming the media was clearly much less into promoting elitist classes and events, and more conscious of the cost of the sport.  For example, even when the UK had its early 12 Metre America's Cup challenges on, the AC took up only about 3% of the word count in major UK sailing publications.  The percentage in international publications, even in AC years, was similarly low.  Yachting World produced the Jack Holt designs and Yachting in the USA ran events like the America's Teacup regatta that gave the Hobie, Windsurfer and Laser their early fame. 

I spend 10 years writing and running magazines, and we knew that what really got the attention of readers excited enough to buy the mags was stuff they could relate to themselves. That may have changed these days now that the media only needs to generate clicks rather than getting people to actually spend their own money on buying a mag. 

There's some cultural reasons related to the industry that (IMHO, with hindsight) lead editors to promote the "grand prix" events. It's also just easier to do another piece on a new exotic design than it is to write an interesting piece on the grass roots. The end result, however, seems to be unhealthy.

In fairness, our hosts are just about the best at promoting the grass roots even if they do so less than they formerly did.

An interesting point about possibly lazy journalism, using manufacture's prompted promotion over going out and creating features. Mind you, real world economics rule and it's easy enough to see why.

I asked the question as regards the future.

CT questions the emphasis and balance as regards majority usage.

The UFO was at Weymouth when it was optimist nats a few years ago. It’s no exaggeration the optimists sailed faster, the UFO couldn’t cope with any form of chop. 

Just my humble opinion, but iIt was only years after I got out of the sailing media, and then got back in for one year, that I realised how skewed it makes one's perspective. Not only does the industry you deal with 9-5 have more economic incentive to sell new stuff than to encourage people to sail old stuff, but by definition the industry tends to be staffed with people who are heavily into new technology (much more so than the typical sailor) and because they spend 40+ hours a week dealing with sailing, they get bored with it more easily than the typical sailor who spends 40+ hours a week as an accountant, plumber or whatever. The industry insiders therefore seem to demand more novelty than the typical sailor does.  The industry creates a very different view from that of the average sailor, which in turn changes the view of the journos.

It's also really hard to come up with a decent article on something like a Solo, Dart or Merlin; after all, many of your readers have spent years owning such boats and sailing them on the weekend. They know more about the class, the characters and the techniques than a journo knows, so it takes a lot of research to do an article with much depth. When it comes to more exotic stuff, it's easy for the journo to find out more than the average sailor knows, so there's an incentive for the journo to exercise that advantage.

When we look back at old mags we see that years ago, because of different economics in sailing and publishing and the different level of experience of the average sailor, magazines could have a very different approach and therefore they wrote much more about the grass roots (and also had much higher readership). 

So it's not really laziness, just the fact that being inside any industry affects your view of it. There does seem to be a bit of a lack of hard-hitting questions or articles these days, IMHO, but it's easy to say that from the outside.  Year ago I did a freelance article about a new cat and although it didn't say anything at all bad about the major established cat class and was meant to be very objective (for example, I quoted Glenn Ashby saying that the new cat was not as tough as the major established cat class) the latter's manufacturer pulled all their advertising from the mag. That meant the mag lost its second-biggest advertiser, but the editor took the long view and said that editorial integrity was more important than short term revenue loss. Given the current economic times, that is a harder line to take.

If you ask the foiling hysterics, it's easy. World foiling championships that normally get about 20 youth and juniors show that all the kids prefer foiling, whereas world "seahugger" championship with 400+ kids (like the Opti and Laser 4.7 worlds) shows that all the kids are bored with conventional boats. 

Old people have been telling us for years that kids all prefer skiffs, cats and foils and yet those darned kids never seem to get the message.

If kids do want to foil, of course, then one wonders why would they do it on a dinghy. If your foiling you don't need to drag a big heavy hull around and you're not normally sailing in less than 8 knots, so a board makes much more sense. Apparently guys like Tom Slingsby, Nathan Outteridge and Glenn Ashby are all windinging furiously these days and getting 18+ knots upwind at good angles.