Foilers for sale

Originally posted by mozzy I don't think faster boats will ever be more popular.

They used to be though. Time was that Fireballs and FiveOhs regularly had 100plus championships.

Its a prediction I got massively wrong. Back in the 80s a major problem for the Cherubs, which were then a single string boat with a moderate sized rig, was the number of people who'd get a boat and give up because they failed to acquire the skills.

As I expect I've said before, when the 29er came out I predicted a new golden age for high performance sailing, because there were going to be all these folk growing out of the class, but with all the skills for high performance boats. Obviously that hasn't happened, and having gained the skills it's apparently been there done that, and that's it. I'm at a loss to explain it, but it's clearly the case.



Edited by JimC - 05 Mar 19 at 9:34am

On a small pond the challenge becomes more tactical as there isn't room to get a fast boat wound up to speed much of the time. I enjoy it (even in an unsuitable boat like the Blaze) but it is an entirely different game to open water racing.

Originally posted by mozzy Originally posted by Chris 249 Sorry to be negative in response to your posts. Yours in sailing. No need to be sorry, i agree with what you're saying.  As much as anyone I'd say people should choose boats that suits their sailing area and get class racing in those. The very keen can then organise themselves around regional and international fleets.  Possibly there are a few in powerful positions who are over optimistic of what the possible reach of foiling boats could be. But you need a mix in all organisations and I think there's a decent amount of conservatism too.

I’m much less concerned about this than I am a about the group across the sailing media and sailing-Tech industries pushing dynamic handicaps (substitute machine arbitrariness for human) and fixed course racing (so you can do it alone). That’s like solitary sexual activity. Can’t afford to lose the collective, social aspects of the sport.

If I could interject a little, whilst in general for our world, I agree with pretty much everything written here regarding the overhyping of foils and boats, future it most definitely aint, not in a broad take up sense. I think that will come, in fact already has, in wind and kitesurfing. Kites have been pushing foil design for some time and their results have now spun off into windsurfing, and paddle boarding as well as regular surfing with new ever lower wind foils that riders pump onto the plane bringing the activity into surf and waves and very definitely into the none competitive free ride arena and importantly for wind sport in these days of ever longer periods with fickle and low winds. I've even had to take on an agency to complement my kite brand and will have to learn this summer like it or not, I suspect I'll choose windsurfing as a platform to start with as it's easier, but sooner or later I'll have to kite as well, but it doesn't fill me with any desire to do it in a dinghy, it simply won't scratch the itch that racing dinghies offers. Banging corners on foils is pretty much the same as Cat sailing, i.e. not the real thing.

Edited by iGRF - 05 Mar 19 at 11:19pm