Foilers for sale

One thing that seems to be forgotten amongst the hype is that the speed increase in most boats is not all that dramatic. The Small Catamaran Handicap Rating System guys, who analyse many races, initially rated foilers at 7% quicker but now they are rated 4% quicker. It's the same with the MOCRA rule for offshore multis. For simple physical reasons it seems that most boats don't get the the enormous speed boost from foils that we Moths and kites do.

Interestingly, 4% is the same sort of speed gain you get from adding a kite to a cat, but adding assys to cats didn't cause the same sort of hype as adding foils. I've just been trying to do more research into the arrival of the trapeze and realised that I must re-title the relevant blog post, because no one seems to have hyped up traps (which add something like 2% to a boat's speed if I recall correctly) in the way they are hyping up foils. And the fact that most cat sailors still haven't bothered with kites, which are arguably a cheaper and lower hassle way of adding the same amount of speed, makes one wonder why anyone would think most of them will ever bother with foils.

Still, I think we may be preaching to the choir on this forum, which unlike some others is made up of people who actually sail rather than just talk about it. 

I have highlighted trapeze boats, spinnaker boats and those with PN less than 1000. It is clear that the boats people actually sail do not include the adrenaline rockets. Don’t get me wrong an RS400 etc etc aren’t slouches but not twin wire asymmetrical or foils. Fascinating stuff, at least to me 

If I recall correctly, the message was that there is a tendency to drift away in the period between selling one boat and buying another, even if the sale was made with the full intent of buying anew. Therefore, Dave said if I recall correctly, the aim should be to avoid people having to buy a new boat each time they wanted to move up a performance level, because even if they did fully intend to move up the speed ladder many of them never ended up buying the new boat.

I'll check the video up later. EDIT - part of it is in the vid here at 30.09 on for a minute or so. I think the 25% may have been from Dave or Steve on SA or somewhere else in this chat.

It does seem to chime in with some things I've seen although I wouldn't put it at 25% - but then most of us here come from much healthier dinghy scenes than the Clarks do. 

I don't really know much about selling boats - it's not really something I've done. They just tend to keep on hanging around.

PS - looking at that vid again, I see Dave says something similar to what I have seen before, in relation to mountain biking. Essentially he says "how come we've created these devices that have an amazing level of performance but the sport is declining?"  The assumption seems to be that if devices have amazing performance, the sport should do well. That assumed link between speed and popularity seems to have very dubious basis in fact.

Dave also says that the fact that people who can afford fast boats often buy them indicates that people prefer speed. Surely that cannot be true, because we all know that there are many people buying keelboats who could afford skiffs, cats or foilers, and many people who buy skiffs and cats and foiling dinghies who could afford foiling kiteboards which are faster. And of course, the same is true in other sports.

As I said, much respect for the Clarks, but when you come from a wealthy family that has been fascinated with speed under sail for three generations you may not notice that most people really don't care about it.