Rossiter Pintail Mortagne sur Gironde, near Bordeaux |
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Laser 28 - Excellent example of this great design Hamble le rice |
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Laser 140101 Tynemouth |
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List classes of boat for sale |
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Medway Maniac ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Posted: 02 Sep 14 at 12:17pm |
The local IC has given up and gone cruising, the other one used to come mostly to race him. Perfect boats for a round course, with lots of non-kite off-wind legs (as are Tasars and Icons, of course, plus all the una rigs)
I just recall the hassle of rigging on the day in a queue along the road, then having to park your trailer miles away, and de-rigging is a crowded affair too, unless numbers have dropped off a lot. Last time I did it I took the boat down and rigged it the previous day. To make all that worthwhile it has to be perfect conditions wind and tide-wise. This year we'd have had real problems with the daggerboard; an 800 would have been a nightmare too. Even the Alto pairing claimed that their centreboard was half its original length by the time they'd sailed up the Swale...
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JimC ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 17 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6662 |
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Think they're in San Francisco. |
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iGRF ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 07 Mar 11 Location: Hythe Online Status: Offline Posts: 6499 |
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Don't tell me that doesn't happen already, I bet there were any number of boats that looked at the forecast and didn't show. You can't differentiate, every argument you make can be countered by similar differences between boats. I didn't notice any International canoes this year and they usually win. In fact i thought the medal for bravery should have gone to the dude in the RS300, talk about mission impossible has it got a centreboard even? I didn't see a single B14, or Musto Skiff or RS800 and they've all been present in the past.
And you cracking on about skill, nobody is going to enter a 40+ mile race like that unless they have the minerals, they might not be a river dwelling tide rat, but they will have had what it takes to do that so would a racing windsurfer especially on a day like saturday. Edited by iGRF - 02 Sep 14 at 12:10pm |
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Medway Maniac ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
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Is it fair play that a 'craft' should win just because of the wind strength and almost without regard to skill level? Nobody pretends that the PY system is entirely fair, but it does us for weekly racing among not too dissimilar 'craft'. For that reason we split our fast trap boats off from our slower hikers into Fast and Medium handicap fleets. We do have all-comers races, but if it's a F.3-4 I'd have to sail very badly in the V3k to be beaten by my Wayfarer mate. Equally, he'd have to sail terribly to be beaten by me in a F2-3. We can put up with that for the odd race for novelty's sake, and some races are F2-4, then it's anybody's depending upon if and when they get the gusts. But the difference between boards (and foilers) and dinghies is just too great. If it's less than planing/foiling, the boards and foilers might just as well stay ashore. Vice versa in planing foiling conditions. Does IOSSC really want some potential dinghy competitors to look at Wind Guru (I prefer XC Weather actually) and think "no, it's a board day, we won't get a look in", or boardies to say 'we'll get slaughtered unless we plane, we'll stay on the beach'? I know we should sail round the island for the joy of it, but... Give everyone their own trophies and let them race separately.
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iGRF ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 07 Mar 11 Location: Hythe Online Status: Offline Posts: 6499 |
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Well I can see both views and agree both ways, Grumpf the windsurfer says f**k em all they're dinghy sailingt**ts, they have no idea, but Graeme Fuller the commodore of Hythe & Saltwood Sailing Club has to manage his membership requirements and it was that man that was disappointed for one of his members. H&SSC do regularly race boards and dinghies in concert and we would like to encourage participation after team fifteen for our kids. The commodore of IOSSC is equally bereft that we were upset and wishes to help next year, so those two sensible folk are talking, he has historical participation of Boards and is eager to encourage more.
It's a number assigned to a craft, what possible harm could it do? Just another option you can ignore if you wish whilst you concentrate on banjo playing lessons for the retarded, Wayfarers ffs why would you? Unless, hmm let me think, what's that smell? Not more banditry... ![]() Edited by iGRF - 02 Sep 14 at 11:25am |
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Medway Maniac ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
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I seem to recall that apart from the PY issue in mixed racing, there were also the chiselled holes in the sides of the dinghies! I thought a ramming from a Fireball was bad enough, but a board has much better penetrating power!
Question is, do people really want to race standing up, week in, week out in all weathers like we do dinghies? Blue Circle SC had a fair number of Lasers in the '80's, but they all migrated to boards for a few years...then back to Lasers. I wonder why? |
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kneewrecker ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 09 Apr 14 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1586 |
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I see windsurfing as a sport that fundamentally requires travel- you go where the wind takes you and to hell with a fixed agenda set by the committee or the windguru effect spoiling your plans. Hence why a travel plan to hit the south coast got changed last minute to Rutland on Sunday for me....
I could take a different view if I was fortunate enough to live next to a beach that delivered consistently, but even then, judging from some experience of folks in that luxurious position, it does seem to make them, shall we say, 'narrow minded' about what windsurfing is and can offer.
(FYI- that's NOT a dig at Graeme btw, but he'll know who I mean....) |
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GarethT ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 21 Apr 07 Online Status: Offline Posts: 714 |
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I was having this conversation recently about what happens
after the RYA youth/junior pathway. For dinghy sailors, once they have had enough of travelling
the country for their racing there is an option to stay at home and do club
racing instead (invariably in a handicap fleet). It gives them an option to
stay in the sport and keep racing whilst having a lesser burden on time, money
and parents. For windsurfers, there isn’t really that option. If you want
to race you have to travel, so when they’re fed up of travelling they stop
racing forever. If just a few clubs in each region could accommodate windsurfers
in handicap racing, even if they separate them out for prizes, it might help
keep a few more people active in the sport. I suppose if you see dinghy racing
and windsurfer racing as separate sports you might not give a toss about it. |
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iGRF ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 07 Mar 11 Location: Hythe Online Status: Offline Posts: 6499 |
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If your handicap were so perfect, I'd accept all the bullsh*t, but I know every bit of its idiosyncrasies, we also have issues, between Raceboard and say RSX which differ as much as Phantoms in the light inland and in a force 4 in waves against a Contender for example.
It's never going to be perfect, what's wrong at the moment is the wild shifting about to suit pondies, that we wouldn't want to see, once a board has a handicap that should be it unless there is a performance change, moving it around just because a new bunch of muppets on bogs worth sc have decided to submit returns or an organisation has decided to take over the world in the winter linking previously disparate events into one series of hot shots and pro's, no we wouldn't like that at all. |
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Medway Maniac ![]() Really should get out more ![]() ![]() Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
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Exactly. Among dinghies the effect is certainly there, but not to the extent that it makes the outcome totally predictable in advance. As I was reminded at the recent Medway Marathon. The forecast was F.5/6, and I bet my Wayfarer chum that he'd stand no chance against the trap boats. But he won (and I had to endure a barracking while buying two pints (actually three - one for me). What I should have bet was that he'd lose to any trap boat that got around cleanly. As it was, they all spent too much time exploding their foils (the 14), or full of water (the Alto - Grumph will love that), or plain overpowered and too-often capsized in the extreme gusty conditions. My mate won through survival (and beat lots of other Wayfarers), but it was still hardly a handicap 'race', where PY's had any valid meaning. |
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