Dinghy popularity

Originally posted by Old Timer   In these example these people have prior experience ....they can ride a bike. That breaks the analogy. You would not put someone who had NEVER cycled on a fixed wheel track bike to learn, there are far more suitable bikes that would give a faster and more enjoyable learning experience. Who is Grumpf ?? Anyway ... I fear we are losing track to what we are discussing here, I believe iGRF's issue is he believes that there is no equipment suitable for a novice adult, clearly he is incorrect there is are a huge array of options.

At least two examples I gave were people who could already sail and already ride bikes (as my post said) so since they had experience in both, the analogy is not broken.

In any case, since fewer people can already sail, why do we make sailing appear even harder than it is?  In my experience, the shift from "beginner's bike" (a flat bar hybrid) to high-performance bike is far, far, less difficult than the shift from "beginner's boat" (Pico/Heron) to high-performance boat (18 Foot Skiff, International Canoe, Moth).  The way that many people are promoting sailing is making this problem worse because they are pushing the classes that even most good club racers can't sail practically.

The bike mainstream (which ranges from beginners department-store hybrid to Tour and track) are all designed with user-friendliness as a high priority - it's even required in the UCI rules. The rules mean that a person who has never ridden a bike could certainly learn to ride on a track bike, but the issue doesn't arise because the sport and industry are smart and they promote more user-friendly gear. To a considerable extent, sailing isn't.

There ARE extreme high-performance bikes that pay little attention to user-friendliness and they are miles faster than Sir Wiggo's time trial bike;

The interesting thing is that if you pick up a bike mag (even ProCycling) or a book on bike racing, or go to a shop, these streamlined recumbent 'bents are utterly ignored, in favour of much slower, more user-friendly gear such as the UCI-restricted bikes used by Team Sky and Pendleton. It's as if sailing ignored foilers and skiffs and just looked at Finns and Lasers and similar craft.

To take it back more to what Grumpf is discussing, the issue is that while there ARE good boats for adult beginners, in sailing we spend too much time promoting the stuff that most of them will never realistically be able to get into.

I'm not saying that dinghy sailing should ignore foilers and skiffs (which IMHO are sort of like recumbent streamliners in some ways) in favour of Finns and Lasers and Picos (which IMHO are comparable to road bikes, track bikes and hybrids respectively) but it IS food for thought when a very popular sport ignores the really fast gear in favour of more accessible stuff.

Originally posted by Chris 249   To take it back more to what Grumpf is discussing, the issue is that while there ARE good boats for adult beginners, in sailing we spend too much time promoting the stuff that most of them will never realistically be able to get into.

Originally posted by yellowwelly Originally posted by Chris 249 I'm not saying that dinghy sailing should ignore foilers and skiffs (which IMHO are sort of like recumbent streamliners in some ways) in favour of Finns and Lasers and Picos (which IMHO are comparable to road bikes, track bikes and hybrids respectively) but it IS food for thought when a very popular sport ignores the really fast gear in favour of more accessible stuff. +1 ... but I fear this forum is representative of a very small number of people actually sailing.  Especially in a section supposedly focused on dinghy development.   Most of the talk in our bar, in our boat park and on our discussion boards for sailing and class associations is about the boats we actively sail.  Sure there's the odd link to Mirabaud or that trimaran that flipped in Dublin, but really it has little discussion value outside of here, SA or BD.   Graeme is struggling to comprehend that actually most of us have now been through the cycle once, some twice, of trying something different, but realising its the tactical sailing against similar paced boats that is at the heart of the sport we do.  It doesn't need grand scale change, just a gentle progression to keep it in line with current values.  Blazers in the bar after sailing on Wednesday... I think not.   We need numbers and accessibility.  Other sports are competition. The economy is fighting against us.  Sailing will never be 'cheap' while we are so time poor we cannot commit to crewing for someone, or commit to buying a double hander and getting the crewing issues yourself.   Youth culture too- although the RYA spiral of disappointment and disillusionment doesn't help on that front. There really isn't the perfect boat out there- everyone of them is a compromise- but one you can race come rain or shine, against men and women of differing ages and fitness level and body types makes that communal goal far easier to realise than something that is demanding to sail or only accessible in a narrow (often the duller end) of the wind range.   Even in keelboats, the sports boat boom of melges and 1720s and 707s etc seems to have been replaced with slower boats- J24s and even the old Sonata would be my choice if racing small keels at the coast.  And that would be at the expense of some quite frankly awesome classic / open boat racing we have in the UK, where crewing would be a total laugh.

The trouble with the larger poly boats is that the material doesn't seem to scale well and they do get pretty damn heavy, which can be quite an offputting factor on the beach (depending on your beach of course). Of course the same is true of a number of the "traditional" classes.

In the UK I wouldn't look beyond the FevaXL and the Topper for younger teens, but I can easily understand people not wanting to heave an RS Vision around... Your poly "boat" is definitely at the small end of the spectrum of course.

So I' not sure I would say that there are many great boats for adult beginners. There's a huge supply of vaguely adequate boats of course.
I think the Feva in XL guise is a great boat for the job (even if I'm not convinced the rags should have been mylar, so's the 29er, although too exotic for what we are discussing here. But I suspect the job of designing a great beginners boat is probably a very difficult one. It needs to be light and cheap, nimble and responsive in the light but stable and steady not hurtle across the water at mega speeds in a breeze, all in all its a lot to ask.

Edited by JimC - 27 Jun 13 at 12:38pm

Originally posted by Andymac Now, I fancy a go at ski jumping off a 90 metre hill. I've done a couple of hours on a dry ski slope (with only a broken thumb to show for it). The skis look pretty wide and long...I can go straight and do a snow plough. Can't be that difficult.

Go for it - I'm sure gravity does most of the work!