18 footers trialing foils

Originally posted by Jack Sparrow For brevity I was treating the 18's collectively which was probably a bad idea.

Definitely. The 18footer politics and history is enormously complicated, and if you're not local you probably can't gain sufficient insight to understand it, and if you are local you'll probably have so much history and emotion tied up in all the issues you probably won't be able to manage a rational neutral viewpoint...

Originally posted by Jack Sparrow  (Low Budget - back in the days of TOOHEYS Ripper Replay, the coverage wasn't so low budget was it.

It says exactly what any media outlet says everyday of the week. Yesterday was old, tomorrow is new. News media, all media, sells tomorrow. We all crave the next thing. And it doesn't matter if it isn't. Corporate sponsors will spend where they will get the most coverage. If the media see something as tomorrow's world it will cover it, and to create contrast, embellish the distance between the incumbent. That's why I think the 18's might be in trouble.

The point captured here by 9 NEWS Sydney in glorious technicolour:

Originally posted by mozzy Remember the first foiling moths took a while to be comprehensively faster. Cats already had huge leverage and a low drag hull.  I think people always realised that a cat was a good platform for foils, it's just the benefit of flying the boat was smaller. You can see why in a fleet race scenario it would be a huge risk take and not completely obvious it would be faster.  ... hindsight  makes it obvious now, post san-fran; but I seem to recall most people being pretty shocked when reports came out ENTZ was foiling, and people were shocked when the boats took off upwind in the cup.  Back to 18s. I used to watch quite a bit of 18s, but seeing 7 win by minutes got tedious. The fleet seemed to be a lot of by-gone top sailors who were now also-rans. Unless it was honking and a chance of crashes I wouldn't really watch. I think the depth in talent fell out of the 18 fleet; most going moth sailing instead. But, moths really make a crap platform to watch on screen; great for short clips, but too spread out otherwise.   The superfoilers should be interesting... half of it is the boat, but also the line up they have already. Why couldn't the 18s get Ashby, Jenson, Outterridge?

Not sure how many superfoilers there are or what is proposed for the series, but in the context of the cost inherent in getting a commercial proposition like that off the ground, buying those guys for a couple of weekend is pocket change. To start with boats alone design build and operate a few of them, let’s say £100k a boat capex alone with zero residual value, buying in some talent to facilitate the confidence trick that is getting a new series of the ground would be smart I think. £6k a weekend for that three I reckon given it’s on their doorsteps and they are all back in the pro sailors equivalent of the gig economy. Offer a few others competitive day rates with say gc32 or whatever other foiling circuit, it may get traction. Where does the revenue come from? Presumably tv And YouTube ads and sail billboard? I’ll be honest I’d far rather watch stars. Which in turn I would probably rather watch them than moths. Which in turn I would much rather watch than slower crashier superfoilers.