Dinghy Development

Now this is very interesting. Admittedly GRF is away reinforcing his existing fortune in Europe but this post is fading. Does this imply that none of our illustrious contributors see or imagine any significant future developments? It would seem that we would rather worry about sail numbers and cardboard rudder wings.

Exactly Maxi.

Anyway Tick, here’s my off-the-cuff 2p.

In my living memory new designs seem to split into one of two camps – “Faster Is Better” and “Build ‘Em Cheap”.    The FIB boats get lots of photo’s in Y&Y, lots of chatter on forums and are generally admired by the connoisseurs on this, and other, forums. But, relatively few people put their money where the mouth is. Why? Because the easy way to make a faster design is to make a lighter, narrower hull, with above water extensions and a big rig. So they become harder to sail, more prone to damage and more expensive. You need time and money to succeed, and not many people have both.

At the other end of the spectrum, the BEC boats are generally poorly regarded, but sell well (and presumably are commercially successful). These days they are rotomoulded and perceived as flexible and heavy and often come with very basic rigs. I would imagine that many of these boats are bought by people who sail for only a very few weeks of the year, who don’t want to spend a fortune, don’t want maintenance issues that can come with 2nd hand boats and don’t necessarily know or care that the boat isn’t very good at its primary function – sailing.

One of the main reasons that some traditional classes continue to do well is that they are well proportioned. They are not too light and too narrow. They are attainable. Future designs should seek to be nicer to sail and possibly faster, based not on making them narrower and harder to sail, but by virtue of the fact we have a better understanding of the physics, a wider choice of materials and many, many years of feedback to work on. The hulls of Fireballs, Solo’s etc were designed to be good within the constraints of being able to build them from ply. This limits the shapes available. We no longer have those constraints, so, for example, we ought to be able to design a Solo type boat, aimed at the same demographic, using similar dimensions but with improved hull shape.

So where do I see future developments? Well, it will be easy to continue to make boats slightly lighter and slightly narrower than the previous generation, and these will continue to not sell well.
There is potentially much to be gained in underwater appendages and their control – be it T-foiled rudders, Tomahawk style foils, trim tabs, stern flaps, bulbous bows etc. These will either become passive (like the Tomahawk), or electronically autonomously controlled.

On a slightly mundane front, cockpits will become more ergonomic and more tactile materials will be used.

Hulls will be made from re-inforced thermoplastics, which are tougher and greener than polyester or epoxy boats, and much stiffer and lighter than current plastic boats. This will hopefully enable the gap between the FIBs and the BECs to be bridged.

Lots of rambling there, sorry!

nice analysis Peaky

Originally posted by fab100 Adrenaline junkies/speed freaks - who want ultimate performance and a boat-handling challenge

Edited by pondmonkey - 05 Feb 13 at 1:54pm

There was a big change, at some point in the past. Early boats could only sail downwind, blown along by drag. To sail upwind, or downwind quickly, you need to develop lift. That is a fundamental change in the way the boat is propelled, albeit the solution may not look radically different.

Other changes, like using string instead of a mast, or canting and offsetting the rig to eliminate heeling moment, like on SailRocket, are possible. But then is it really a dinghy? All you can do is find more efficient ways of extracting energy from the wind and water. Things like variable geometry, or flexible parts in lieu of stiff parts (and vice versa) may help, but you'll need to find a new energy source to revolutionise the game - maybe magnetism, heat or making use of micro scale fluid movement and vibration, but that will be a wee way off yet!