Class Development Survey

Originally posted by tgruitt

   Class development Survey

I'm interested in the uptake of new technologies into the UK dinghy scene. In particular I want to look at the uptake of carbon masts, laminate sails and epoxy/foam sandwich hulls. I've formed a theory that one or more of these technologies (or possibly a combination of more than one) may have been as radical a change as the change from cotton to terylene sails was back in the 1958/61 period, but because the changeover has been much more gradual it has been less obvious. The change to terylene sails in the 60s resulted in something like a 4% performance increase across the whole range of classes.

How to Complete it and Who

The challenge is finding out which classes adopted which technologies when. I'd like as many people as possible to fill in this survey for classes they know about. Even partial answers would be useful, and as many as possible, so I can amalgamate the results. Its suprisingly difficult to remember exactly when these changes occurred so as many opinions as possible are encouraged. This seems to me exactly the sort of exercise where 'crowd sourcing' is useful so the more the merrier.

Because this is a crowdsourcing exercise please feel very free to post the link anywhere that UK dinghy sailors will see it. Twitter, Facebook, whatever, the more the merrier...

There's more information about how and why I'm doing this on the page. Here's the link again.

Edited by JimC - 13 Mar 14 at 2:04pm