The Boss

It might be an idea for y&y to shed some light on the subject because it was the y&y report I was refferring to but have long lost the copy. The boats which were on trial were the 49er, OD14 (one design Int 14), I14, B14, 505, FD, Nautivela Jet, Mach 2, 5000, Iso and Boss. From the pictures it seemed like there was only one of each boat on trial..........

Originally posted by CT249 Many (or all) classes had two boats, as shown by pics in other mags and by the reports in Aust Sailing (and maybe Seahorse.....couldn't get Y&Y here then). The real historical Q is when is the Osprey going to stop claiming it beat the FD and invented the trapeze, way back when in those trials ?

Absolutely not !!!

Ohhhhhh no it did not beat the FD in the first trials, or the first race!

There outa be a tisk tisk finger wave emoticon!

FD results - 4,5,2,7(different crew)3,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1.

Osprey results - 5,6,7,1,8,3,4,9,2,6,3,6,4

Crushing victory to the FD, and that was before the FD got a trapeze or a genoa, but when Osprey had fitted a trap for three races at the suggestion of Sir Peter Scott. Apparently the no-genoa no-trap FD then came to the UK and got a bit of a kicking in light airs and waves, then put the wire and big genny on the for second trials and finished fractionally behind the blown-up Five-Oh but ahead of the Osprey which did well for 3rd.

Now, you Ospreyers have all been very naughty and until your webmaster removes those fibs from your website, all the other fastsailers can just call out "it's all just more blinkin; propaganda" every time you call for water, starboard, or say "it's your turn to buy the drinks".

I do like the fact that they had the openess and transparency to actually publish this sort of stuff in those days.....the last trials ISAF held (the windsurfing ones) seem to have been a disgrace in terms of allowing the sailing public any info.

Ah ha Chris, you may very will think so, but we couldn't possibly comment

Anyway, wasn't the 5o actually the Coronet, and the 5o5 came a little bit later?

The great travesty of this was that it dumped the FD anyway.  Why take out the rolls-royce of sailing, a tweaky, high-performance boat with an international following and replace it with a SMOD?  wouldn't it have been better to leave the FD in (as with the Tornado) and bring it up-to-date, then we could have the 49er as a great, £2000 cheaper, high performance skiff, instead of the £2000 more expensive, Olympic hopefuls only job it now is.  If the arugment worked for the FD-to-49er, why not Tornado-to-Tiger, Yngling-to-M24, Laser-to-MODS, Laser-radial-to-reefedMODS and 470-to-29erxx???

The i14 & 49er did for the Boss and the L5000 for good reason; they just didn't go far enough (because of cost as a driving force for technology chosen) and were therefore quickly outdated by the development guys (i14, Cherub) and the SMODs (49er, 29er)... the same fate later befell the L4000, Buzz, Spice, L3000 etc.. and will probably happen to the RS700, RS800, Vago, Xenon etc... not enough take up and "stuck in time" SMODness of build standards and technology means they will be out paced, out-gunned and eventually, out sold, by the dev class boys or by the next SMOD to come along that pushes the boundaries of technology the way the x9er series of Musto Skiff have.