Alternative to a Contender

Balance is everything with a trolley, you don't want to be wasting energy lifting the weight of the boat when you could more usefully use it to pull the thing.

Originally posted by boatshed The 59er seemed to benefit from the crew being on the wire

As you can tell from the huge fleets round the world...

I'm sure Farr could scale up the 3.7 config for bigger sailors, whether I could do it first time would be another matter. But the proportions would be significantly different. It would certainly need to be longer and quite possibly thinner. With what we can do now with construction and weight maybe a bit less freeboard but possibly vestigial wings to maintain separation of feet from wake.
Probably wouldn't be a country mile away from the RS600.

To destodge the Contender, well, you'd be reducing the weight a lot so the rocker line probably should change, and then with what we know now it would probably be good to have chines aft at least. And then that rig is so much of its era, for sure that would need to change completely. A bit more freeboard would do no harm either as a trapezing platform, or maybe little winglets to get the ankles a bit more away from the waves.
Probably wouldn't be a country mile away from the RS600.

But if one wanted a nice modern singlehander it might be interesting to buy Clive a lot of pints and get him involved in a conversation about what he'd do if designing a boat to the spec with what he knows now.
Probably have some appreciable improvements on the RS600...

Edited by JimC - 23 May 15 at 12:33pm

Just sticking an extra wire on a boat designed without it rarely works well. Much better off to have a boat designed for the job from scratch.

I well remember Paul Bieker saying of 14s "everyone said two strings would be a cheap way to go faster, then we all got to chuck our hulls".

A great boat will have hull shape, displacement, rig, righting moment all working in harmony. Change one without the matching change in the rest and at best you'll have a mediocre boat.
Frankenboats can be great fun to assemble, and a giggle when conditions are right, but rarely something you'd want to get up every Sunday morning to sail.

I'm not suggesting tampering with the Contender.   They seem to be doing.  Although the style of boat interests me, I won't get another one.

I'm not interested in a  Laser II.  I would like a bigger person's version of a Farr 3.7 which is why I suggested putting a trapeze on a Phantom.  Maybe even sticking Halo rig on a Phantom with a trapeze.  11.5 sq.m sail on a Phantom would be pretty close to a bigger persons Farr 3.7.    Unless the hull shape is all wrong.

Maybe that Hadron boat with a double bottom would do also be a suitable hull