David Henshall's article

For the last fifteen years I have raced yachts far more than dinghies. In that time I have seen a massive drop in technical knowledge. The do it yourself culture is gone. Not just the mad scientist designer boffin types, there are still a few about, but the practical boat owner too.

The amount of dinghy owners who send their boat to someone to get it prepped, or the people that only buy replacement ropes from their dinghies manufacturer because they don't know how to set the systems up.

It's very sad.

On this forum and many others I offer my help and advice for free on rope work and rigging matters. I have been a professional in that industry for a long time.

I am glad to tell you that most of the questions I am asked are by the youth sailors, under 25s and the like who want to do it themselves, to understand how it works, and to save a few quid.

I think the Laser 4000, Rs400, ISO etc, the one design budget high performance boat, era are very much to blame for this technical knowledge gap....! You can customise and personalise your boat so much more in Fireballs, 505s, Scorpions and Merlins.

Things have to move forward, from my point of view the most exciting classes are still the I14s, Moths and Cherubs that develop technological advances and breed intelligent sailors.

Not at the moment other than for small components. Once the printers for metal get cheap enough then you just make replacements, might put a chandlery out of business,...but u doubt it.

I don't think at the moment the printers are large enough to make a boat though, maybe a radio controlled one, but not laser size.

Originally posted by Rupert Interesting article. Gets a bit bogged down with Merlins (radical within restricted rules can never be truly radical) but certainly food for thought.

I dunno that things were much rosier 25 years ago really. I can recall ranting at the show about huge effort being made into what might make a boat 1% faster to the exclusion of what might make it 10% faster...

I also recall back in those days meeting an RYA guest of honour, whose name I have shamefully forgotten, but who had sailed with Uffa in the 30s. He was, inter alia, criticising all the boats were 'too damn heavy'. Happily our Cherub met his approval, but it's sobering to think that he would probably make similar complaint at the show now.

I've read Davids excellent article Radical thinking twice today and found it incredibly interesting. One view I have is that the focus of innovation has moved away from the boat and more towards the rig, but not really in terms of manufacture more in terms of control. My view is that the skills shortage seen within industry is having an impact in sports and social contexts. This is largely driven by the promotion of computational methods and academias desire to be seen to keep up with the times coupled with ever reducing budgets which limit the ability to provide people with hands-on experience. Individuals like Dan Holman are few and far between within his generation, sure many have the theoretical backgrounds afforded by engineering degrees but how many younger sailors are able to do any more than a simply gel-coat repair on their pride and joy? Sadly I fear the answer is not many. Most of the so-called innovators in our sport are either deceased or progressing towards their senior years.

A second point is that I think the 'right first time' culture that seems to be demanded in most R&D organisations, stifles development and true innovation. Current generations are too scared of failure, so developments are small, controlled and with minimal risk.

Going back to rigs then, most of the recent developments are centred around multi-component adjustment which makes use of off the shelf components, so the activity is largely theoretical with little risk of failure as if it doesn't work you just lock it off and sail as if you had a non adjustable rig.

So I dont think we will see large scale innovation and development until young people start getting their hands dirty again and for this we are going to have to be using readily available, easy to use materials.

Unfortunately I dont see it coming any time soon.

Radical thinking

Edited by craiggo - 18 Dec 14 at 10:56pm