If they're so identical how come some are qui

Originally posted by iGRF So here's one to ponder over. There's this old wooden solo down the lake not particularly light, but when the wind becomes spectral, it is astonishingly quick, it just ghosts along and no matter how bad a start, not that the helm isn't half decent, but he just chomps his way through the fleet to the front often winning over the water against boats with much faster handicap. Now I haven't managed to get a really good look under the bonnet so to speak, but come on you 'One Designs are everything', what's going on here? If I were to guess I'd speculate that the wooden bottom got warped at birth in some convex way that produced a more rounded underwater shape that gives an optimum wetted surface when not ploughing through the water fast, but it's not obvious to the cursory glance. And yes he bloody beat me again yesterday..

Originally posted by davidyacht Originally posted by jeffers The experience at Hunts is that those who have gone from old Solos to the current generation of FRP/foam sandwich boats have made a marked step forward in performance. How much of this is down to having a newer stiffer boat with the correct rig for them and how much of it is down to the old boat being floppy, worn sail and wrong mast is debateable. I am expecting the Solo PY to get a bit faster this year though.....  I wonder if Jim has any data for Laser sailors who trade in their clapped out old boat for a new one with a decent rag?  How much does new boat fever and a crisp white sail improve performance?

Originally posted by davidyacht I wonder if Jim has any data for Laser sailors who trade in their clapped out old boat for a new one with a decent rag?  How much does new boat fever and a crisp white sail improve performance?

One of our guys traditionally a back marker in the mackerel fleet, upgraded this year buying our star sailors Laser, the improvement was quite dramatic, not only the boat speed but the effect it had on him, he began to try harder hiking, read books, bought the videos to the point he became a bloody nuisance at the front of the fleet, we had to give him the most improved sailors award, which you'd normally give beginners, but in this case it was meant sincerely. To come from club level guy self taught to break through and give the top guys in our club a hard time and they are all seasoned national fleet campaigners was a very heartening effort and a joy to see.

Many of our current (mostly traditional) classes started out with plywood as the main material and were built by numerous professional as well as amateur builders.  Measurement tolerances were very understandably ‘generous’ as skills varied enormously.  A good builder would exploit the measurement range permitted to ‘tweak’ as near an optimal form as possible.  Later GRP etc came along and for a while at least good (plywood) builders could possibly keep ahead  of these ‘better’ new materials.

Eventually however the ‘new wave’ builders looked even more carefully at the tolerances available and ‘tweaked’ things a bit further still, all the time learning how to use the materials in new ways.  Many started to produce ‘compound curves’ in previous ‘panel’ areas to great benefit.   Note that this is almost impossible to do with sheet plywood which can only be ‘bent’ or ‘twisted’.  This compound curve approach particularly suited the ‘new materials’ as both the hull ‘form’ could be improved and the ‘stiffness’ (relative to material weight) was raised still further.

Add on a couple of decades and some of these traditional classes reached a point where any builders that remained tend to all produce virtually the same optimal shape – fully exploiting both the ‘new’ materials and the measurement tolerances originally developed to encourage all builder including many amateurs.  Even in some development classes hull form development is today incremental at most - there is little left to exploit in the rules without changing them !

Good FRP boats are not simply copies of the very best wood (plywood) ones that were ever made – they are/were often able to exploit things effectively impossible to produce with sheet plywood ! 

The experience at Hunts is that those who have gone from old Solos to the current generation of FRP/foam sandwich boats have made a marked step forward in performance. How much of this is down to having a newer stiffer boat with the correct rig for them and how much of it is down to the old boat being floppy, worn sail and wrong mast is debateable.