Women's High Performance Dinghy

Interesting thread. Few comments.

While the official announcement came out few days ago the trial was widely known about and discussed in the industry since Q4 2006. I don't think this week's announcement came as a suprise to any manufacturer.

LDC's posting is very nice. I like their proactive communication style. I am sure they will have a great boat going into the trials.

29er footprint is getting hold with it being the 2007 & 2008 ISAF Youth's boat. This will push the 29er into markets where they were not sailed at the national level before.

Let me give you an example. Singapore Sailing does not seem to have Olympic level ambitions for 49er. They don't have any 49ers sailing in the national squads and hence did not have any 29er training for the young sailors. I recently heard that they ordered some 29ers to start preparing their youth sailors for the 2007 & 2008 youths.

What is the relevance of the example? Well, it is true that there are not that many all female twin trap teams around these days but as high performance boats such as 29er are sailed at ISAF Youths level going forward the foundation of sailors ready to go to the next step will grow. I am confident that by 2012 we will have many all female twin trap teams around to make this new Olympic class a success.

Personally, having a 29erXX myself, I am more than a little biased in this discussion but I'd like to end up by saying, whichever boat gets selected at the end of the day, it will be a great outcome for our sport as it will certainly increase interest at the national sailing level in many countries around the world and naturally increase the number of crews sailing and competing at the international level.

More people on the water = more boats to go around & more fun. Best of luck to all participating designers / builders.

Regards, KK

Very good point

Also the 49er kite is pretty heavy so a female crew might struggle abit with it as well.

Disagre about the Tornado - do not see any reasons why a bloke could not crew for a girly and make the thing fly (would also have the lard in the right place).  Crew does most of the grunty work on the Tornado anyway...

Just to correct the usual British 'not sailed here' attitude; the Star is not just popular amongst rich americans. There are something like 3000 active [i.e. regularly sailed] boats worldwide covering almost all major sailing countries [with a few notable expections - ok]. The class year book for last year has something like 150-200 pages of 2005 regatta and trophy results [not reports - just major fleet and district results in fairly small print].

Something like 70-80 boats have been built every year for as long as anyone can remember and if you just hop over the channel to Germany you'll find events that have had 60-80 boat turnouts there for years. Apart from there, near[ish] us there are good fleets in France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finnland, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal - now even Americans know those places are not in America. I wonder how many other classes [dinghy or keelboat] have anything like the wide geographic spread and numbers of active boats the Star has. [Starter for ten is the Laser.....]

Popular here no - ever seen one in the UK - there a few about in various places. Is it popular worldwide amongst 'club' sailors - an emphatic, undeniable yes. Hardest Worlds to win? No one can say but the Star has to be up there - remember only something like 3-4 sailors have retained a Star Worlds EVER, no one has ever won three in a row and no one has retained a Worlds title in over 20 years now. Maybe there is a good reason the star has been in te Circus for so long - and anyway what is wrong with a mix of 'traditional' events alongside 'modern' events in the games?

Right - back to discussing the girls twin wire boat.