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Rupert View Drop Down
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    Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 2:16pm
Originally posted by Chris 249



So why not create a new Laser-like crewed dinghy? All the indications are that such a boat would be much more popular and widespread (according to the IOC OPC criteria for Olympic disciplines) than a skiff, because skiffs aren't very popular or widespread even in Australia where they are massively subsidised.




Wasn't the Laser 2 created to be a 2 person Laser? Did the job for many years, but has seriously fallen out of favour now in the UK at least. I just can't picture the 470 being replaced with Laser 2's, though, even though they would satisfy most of the points made on here about accessability and simplicity.
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Rupert View Drop Down
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Posts: 8956 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Rupert Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 3:28pm
Agree, TT, the Laser 2 isn't the best boat out there, but then nor in many ways is a Laser. What it is is fairly cheap, simple and available everywhere. C249 may well be right, that a modern version is needed. The L2000 is rather expensive, but is certainly a very nice boat. Can't see it as an Olympic boat for the everyman, though!
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Slippery Jim View Drop Down
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Posts: 586 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Slippery Jim Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 3:43pm
Originally posted by turnturtle

Too true Rupert... although I don't buy this theory that we need the everyman's boat to be in the Olympics... there's nothing wrong with the 49er for Olympic level racing--- we just need a wider acceptance of the boats at the bottom of the 49er performance pyramid, "rotomoulded asymmetrics"for classification's sake; rather than being dismissive and trying our damnedest to off load our knackered, old, archaic wooden and GRP thoroughbreds onto these unwitting newbies out there, whilst laughing at them for 'making a mistake' buying something shiney and new that emulates the high-end boats we see at the games...  sorry if I sound a tad pedantic on this, it's just guilt-tripping from all the moronic "plastic fantastic" bashing from past-posting.

 
Ahem, TT, emulating means copying and being better than. I hardly think a rotomoulded boat might emulate a 49er...
 
And as for 2000 ers, they are more like sailing a flatiron than a real boat, or am I getting confused with Wayfairies? Confused
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 4:24pm
Originally posted by Slippery Jim

 And as for 2000 ers
 
........a bit like sticking Chris Hoy on a butchers bike.
 
 
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2 pence worth,
 
i think olympic sailing should be pinnacle and aspirational therefore it should be the hardest boats to sail
 
media wise i dont want to watch slow boring tactical races, as good as they are to people that sail and like that sort of thing its very boring to the lay person in general because they dont understand whats going on. think of track events or swimming or rowing, theyre usually a straight line race that people can understand quickly.  therefore i think faster boast are better here as john q public will go "hey look at that boat flying out the water, that looks f**king cool!"
 
as for the fact that we want more countrys competing then you can still do the skiffs and foilers thing as like any sport that a country signs up to to try and get at the top end of the soprt they have to build the infrastructure in the first place which yes could mean slow boats for a while but it takes time to become olympically good does it not?
 
why not run it like they do athletics with multiply competitors from the same country competing? if they qualify theyre in. or like the swimming and let every country compete like they did with eric the eel?
 
having boats that are already popular like the 470 is just crap, would you say to usain bolt run barefoot because most of the world still goes round like that? no you wouldnt.
 
in brief give them fast difficult boats to sail that look the sh*t on tv, change the racing to short course (extreme 40 stlye) and have a version for both sexs and let everyone have a chance of qualifying by giving them a boat, if they dont complete a course in a certain time they dont get in (obviously hold the race in a certain wind stregth say F3)


Edited by slop_idol - 18 Nov 10 at 4:46pm
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Menace View Drop Down
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Posts: 296 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Menace Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 8:31pm

Originally posted by turnturtle

Too true Rupert... although I don't buy this theory that we need the everyman's boat to be in the Olympics... there's nothing wrong with the 49er for Olympic level racing--- we just need a wider acceptance of the boats at the bottom of the 49er performance pyramid, "rotomoulded asymmetrics"for classification's sake; rather than being dismissive and trying our damnedest to off load our knackered, old, archaic wooden and GRP thoroughbreds onto these unwitting newbies out there, whilst laughing at them for 'making a mistake' buying something shiney and new that emulates the high-end boats we see at the games...  sorry if I sound a tad pedantic on this, it's just guilt-tripping from all the moronic "plastic fantastic" bashing from past-posting.


 

James, I am in violent agreement with you on this one, high performance composites are okay for high performance boats but why does everything else seem to aspire to it. This whole looking down noses at roto-moulded boats is a load of bullsh*t, perpetrated by absolute morons. Case in point, someone with a knackered old fireball looking down their nose at someone with a new Vago, or someone with a tired 400 being up themsleves towards someone with a nice Xenon. I've seen this attitude too many times before, however, it never seems to change.

 
I watched a Vago sailing a little while ago, people really enjoying it and to me that's what sailing should be about, not hanging around the "dingey" park repairing "old once were great" boats. Fair enough, not everyone can splash the cash on a new boat, but you don't have to be arsey with those who choose to using "the that's not really a proper" boat pretence, it's really bad for our sport. The overwhelming benefit in the longterm of roto-moulded boats is the recycling potential, why produce a hard to dispose boat when there is actially no need? You can't roto-mould a 49er but you can a 400, 200, Phantom (oh golly gosh, I said Phantom), etc, etc. If you don't like rotomoulding, bio-resins are coming on leaps and bounds, to the extent that other sectors are investing heavily in this sector. Sustainable composites are the way of the future, I'd be a lot more impressed nowadays with a high performance boat made out of sustainable materials than say a moth which weighs 1kg less than the last one.
 
I think ISAF have missed a trick here, any boat that gets selected in the new classes will probaly see at least 16 years of service at the Olympics, why can't a bias be put on the selection criteria, to make things more interesting, a weighting on sustainability, ie, any boat selected must be constructed by at least 50% recyclable materials. Henri Lloyd have the idea with their Blue Eco range. I'm not an environmentalist, but there is heavy pressure on other sectors to become more sustainable, and once you get involved with it, it really makes sense.
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Chris 249 View Drop Down
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Posts: 2041 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Chris 249 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 18 Nov 10 at 11:49pm
Originally posted by turnturtle

chris - again I refer to the 'middle ground' on the pathway that many of us are happy to sail at once we've got some experience under our belts; a fleet of RS400s has just gone to Hong Kong... these are by no means 'skiffs', (in fact have a lot more to do with Merlins here); but they're raced with asymmetric kites, ideally on windward/leeward courses & where necessary, with simplification of the RRS...  okay they're need a bit of facelift now, but the general principal is right on the money.

Sorry, I don't get the connection with 400s or Vagos and a "general principle" that skiffs are the best class for the Games. There's nothing that a 400, for example, shares with a skiff as a "general principle".  There's nothing "skiff like" about sailing windward/leeward courses.

The traditional skiff types probably do at least as much reaching as a conventional dinghy - look at the 14's championship courses, or the courses of the 12 and 18 Footer clubs.  In fact, if you're going to rely on sponsor and spectator interest you may tend to move AWAY from windward/leeward courses, to ones that wind around the water and allow spectators can see the boats.

I don't think you can really segregate the market into two discreet camps of 'skiffs' and 'sh*t kickers' lets say... there's a myriad of options in between.  

I'm not trying to segregate the market, and never said anything was a sh*tkicker.  A lot of what I'm saying is AGAINST segregating the market into "cool new skiffs that will attract sailors" and "boring old dinghies people hate", which is what some people seem to be implying.

Saying that not everything new and cool is skiff-like is actually arguing for recognition of the fact that dinghies can be new and cool.  But a 400, for example, is a conventional classic UK dinghy in all ways, bar the assy, and therefore it's not as well represented by a skiff as it is by a dinghy.

I'm completely in favour of getting new people into simpler, newer boats, although many people will prefer a Heron or 'Ball in the same way that people prefer a wooden armchair over a plastic one, or a thumping loud 'orrible Harley Davidson over a more efficient Honda. 

But there is no reason to think that a Vago or 400 is better represented in the Games by a skiff than by a dinghy.

The format of the Olympics should be more replicated locally if we want local racing to continue to attract the newbies who are out there buying Vagos, Fevas, Xenons etc (simple courses, more visual and easy to understand, accessible sailing... it's the way forward).  Obviously this favours the modern boats that people are actually buying new (rather than the after market manipulated by poor stereotyping and institutional conservatism) and obviously 'real skiffs' represent the pinnacle of this style of boat, therefore imo, they more than justify their place in the Olympic line up...  ISAF have this right.

Having gone through the design influences of (for example) the 400 with its designer, as you say there's no doubt that it's very much a dinghy from the classic UK school of thought.  The only thing it gets from skiffs is the assy.  In return, skiffs got many things (traps, wings, lightweight hulls) from dinghies.  It's an exchange of ideas, so hanging an assy off a nice classic UK dinghy doesn't make the UK boat into something that should be represented by a skiff IMHO.

As an analogy, a few decades ago most of the Aussie Skiffs dropped the traditional flat single-luff "flattie" spinnakers and adopted dinghy-style "parachute" spinnakers. Putting a dinghy sail into a Skiff didn't turn the Skiffs into dinghies, so why should putting an Assy on a dinghy turn it into something best represented by a Skiff?

And there is certainly no heritage of skiffs sailing simple courses - it's quite the opposite.  Even tacking downwind wasn't invented in skiffs - it was seen in Js and offshore yachts of the 1930s and in 505s etc in the '50s.

So a skiff type doesn't represent a simpler style of course or boat, or a WW/LW course, or a 400/Vago type of boat.  It represents something that is a great design and stunning to sail, but not what most sailors want to sail.  If we want to represent what centreboard boat most people (new and old sailors) want to sail, it would be a dinghy.


Edited by Chris 249 - 19 Nov 10 at 3:02am
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Nov 10 at 8:28am
I appreciate that conversations simplify things for the sake of clarity, but it is wrong IMO to draw such clear distinction between a skiff and a dinghy. The boundaries are blurred. To a great many people in the UK anything with an assy kite could be considered a skiff. So to argue for or against skiffs (either as the popular future or as an Olympic genre) is, in some ways, just a case of pedantic semantics.
The majority of people in the future are going to prefer an assy kite to a conventional one, but they probably don't want an expensive, fragile and overcanvassed boat that will do more for their swimming than their sailing. What you call such a boat is largely irrelevant.

On reflection, I am beginning to think the ISAF should have voted for a Ladies assymtric class rather than a skiff. It is much easier to agree a definition (and therefore agree which classes are eligable to contest the spot) and is also a broader church.   
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Posts: 1532 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Pierre Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Nov 10 at 10:04am
Originally posted by Menace

Originally posted by turnturtle

Too true Rupert... although I don't buy this theory that we need the everyman's boat to be in the Olympics... there's nothing wrong with the 49er for Olympic level racing--- we just need a wider acceptance of the boats at the bottom of the 49er performance pyramid, "rotomoulded asymmetrics"for classification's sake; rather than being dismissive and trying our damnedest to off load our knackered, old, archaic wooden and GRP thoroughbreds onto these unwitting newbies out there, whilst laughing at them for 'making a mistake' buying something shiney and new that emulates the high-end boats we see at the games...  sorry if I sound a tad pedantic on this, it's just guilt-tripping from all the moronic "plastic fantastic" bashing from past-posting.


 

James, I am in violent agreement with you on this one, high performance composites are okay for high performance boats but why does everything else seem to aspire to it. This whole looking down noses at roto-moulded boats is a load of bullsh*t, perpetrated by absolute morons. Case in point, someone with a knackered old fireball looking down their nose at someone with a new Vago, or someone with a tired 400 being up themsleves towards someone with a nice Xenon. I've seen this attitude too many times before, however, it never seems to change.

 
I watched a Vago sailing a little while ago, people really enjoying it and to me that's what sailing should be about, not hanging around the "dingey" park repairing "old once were great" boats. Fair enough, not everyone can splash the cash on a new boat, but you don't have to be arsey with those who choose to using "the that's not really a proper" boat pretence, it's really bad for our sport. The overwhelming benefit in the longterm of roto-moulded boats is the recycling potential, why produce a hard to dispose boat when there is actially no need? You can't roto-mould a 49er but you can a 400, 200, Phantom (oh golly gosh, I said Phantom), etc, etc. If you don't like rotomoulding, bio-resins are coming on leaps and bounds, to the extent that other sectors are investing heavily in this sector. Sustainable composites are the way of the future, I'd be a lot more impressed nowadays with a high performance boat made out of sustainable materials than say a moth which weighs 1kg less than the last one.
 
I think ISAF have missed a trick here, any boat that gets selected in the new classes will probaly see at least 16 years of service at the Olympics, why can't a bias be put on the selection criteria, to make things more interesting, a weighting on sustainability, ie, any boat selected must be constructed by at least 50% recyclable materials. Henri Lloyd have the idea with their Blue Eco range. I'm not an environmentalist, but there is heavy pressure on other sectors to become more sustainable, and once you get involved with it, it really makes sense.

Good shot that man. (and TT)..  With improved materials science, then roto-moulding and other cheap-ish manufacturing processes will produce boats that should be acceptable to most levels of sailor.  It would also probably mean that that could be made in this country as cheaply as elsewhere, thus cutting down on product miles, lead-times and all that stuff that tends to frustrate the likes of G.R.F.... who is certainly right regarding some of the commercial aspects.

Olympic equipment should be high quality, fit for purpose, and not be so exclusive that it precludes 80% of the world having access through cost or availability.
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Posts: 2899 		Post Options Post Options   Quote alstorer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Nov 10 at 10:27am
Originally posted by Menace

 If you don't like rotomoulding, bio-resins are coming on leaps and bounds, to the extent that other sectors are investing heavily in this sector. Sustainable composites are the way of the future, I'd be a lot more impressed nowadays with a high performance boat made out of sustainable materials than say a moth which weighs 1kg less than the last one.

I'd be bloody impressed with a high performance boat made of "sustainable" materials given the actual reality of them at the moment. Bio resin properties are stil vastly, vastly inferior to what can be achieved with petrochemical resins. Bio fibres, even worse.
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