How fast????

yeh im 14

Lol ye i no

 

Is a contender a skiff???

If the hull planes on the aft quarter it is considered a skiff and skiffs plane in fairly light winds like the 49er which will plane in a bout 10 knots of wind whereas to get a topper planing you need about 15 knots of wind!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

I think!

Well, the modern skiff line came from down here in Australia, but there's never been a strict definition of the term.

The classic way of showing how confused it has been, historically, is that the 14s were called "skiff" in NSW and the same class was called a "dinghy" in Western Australia, with the other states wavering from one to the other.

The 16s developed from rowing skiffs (called Port Jackson's Watermans' skiffs) and many older 16 sailors use the term "skiffs" for 16s and "18s" and "12s" for the other classes....they don't reckon the 12s and 18s are real "skiffs" because they didn't come directly from rowing skiffs.

Still, if we assume that the 12s, 16s and 18s are traditional real skiffs, we can see that they have (1) multiple rigs (2) lots of righting moment - much more than a dinghy of similar length (3) big rigs (4) open rules (5) used to have rules against decks.

Aussie 14s traditionally fitted all these criteria at different times apart from 5 (IIRC).

You must be able to have a skiff without wings, because 12s and 16s don't have wings. 16s - unarguably a skiff - have now gone one design as have the 18s - so Pt 4 must also be considered dead.

All the skiff classes now have decks so 5 has faded away.

So points 1,2,3 still remain. 2 and 3 also fit other classes that claim the skiff title - 14s and 49ers, RS 800s, perhaps Laser 4000s, Musto Skiffs etc.

So it seems to me that a boat that a "skiff" should have at least a much bigger rig than a comparable dinghy and much more righting moment.

I also reckon that if you can call it a skiff in the bar of the Belmont or St George 16' skiff clubs and NOT get punched out, it's a skiff.

So a Contender is not a skiff because it doesn't fit 1,3,4,5. Mebbe it fits 2, but  Ben Lexcen, the designer of the Contender, never called it a skiff although he was also a skiff designer. Even allowing for changes in terminology, it's got nothing skiff about it.

With respect, Phil, "real" skiffs don't always have have large flat sections aft - the current 16s don't really, nor do many 12s. The older boats were distinctly Veed aft.

Skiff  also don't always have distinct chines - the current dominant "Woof" 12 is still round-bilged and still winning. Most skiffs were round  bilged through most of history (no chine skiff won a title for the first half of their historty) and many skiffs were round bilged until the early '70s. The 16s contined to be round bilged through most of their length for many years after that (fully round-bilged 16s were seen at least as late as '88).

i stand confused