New ladies skiff

The RS900 is intended to meet the spec, and I'm sure the revised design will- just they started earlier? Even this must pre-date the official release of the spec, as the spec was only made public in the past few weeks.

Does anybody actually have any pictures of the 49er FX? 

Looking at the pics in the OP, that hull looks flatter than a flat thing and would be very uncomfortable in a chop.  In fact it's so flat it would make Keira Knightley look positively curvacious, and if I have to bounce around on one of them the boat's got no chance...

I seriously doubt there's enough female market base for a boat of this kind.  If it's accepted for the Olympics then it will sell to those few individuals who have the time, money and raw talent to realistically contemplate sailing at that level.  The history of Olympic classes suggests that selection as an Olympic class inhibits sales to the lesser orders; the exception is the Laser which was a very popular class before it was selected.  So rather than designing ever-more esoteric boats that have no relevance to sailing as a world-wide sport, it would be much better if boats were selected for Olympic competition precisely because they reflect what the real world is sailing.  That way there might be some real recruitment benefits for the sport as a whole.


Edited by Sheetpuller - 24 Oct 11 at 9:56pm

Originally posted by Skiffman I sailed the boat in Lyme bay with between 14-5 knots with another 49er helm (145kg together) and a girl (125kg together)..... It did feel odd with the bow going through the larger waves in normal trim, after moving backwards meant that the bow was in the sky and we were not maximizing the waterline length.

Doesn't this help explain why the dreadnought bow makes sense? If you have to move aft as you do in most boats in order to avoid shipping a chop over the the bow, you increase the drag, notably at the transom. The d- bow appears to enable you to stay forward and just pierce through the waves, not compromising the fore-aft trim.

As to whether Olympic selection would mean the kiss of death to sales, I wonder if that might not depend on the level of one-design. I recall the 505's actually trying to avoid Olympic selection at one time in order to avoid risking the popularity of the class, while the FD apparently suffered greatly by its selection. But maybe that was just because the Olympic thing drove the spec and costs up - a strict one-design à la Laser would not suffer that effect.