A comfortable hiker - does it exist?

Prompted by the picture of Bootscooter's lad on the photo page sailing a D1, it made me think whether it is ever possible to have a comfortable hiker.

The D1 looked from the outset to be designed to be comfortable with nicely shaped and high wings to sit on. Early photos seemed to show the wings matching sailors legs well. What Bootscooter's lad (sorry don't know his name) shows is that in the pursuit of leverage, he is now hiking hard like any dinghy therefore losing all that comfort. Same with the Solo I had, to hike to be competitive was painful.

Now I've probably gone soft as an average middle aged sailor, but one thing that I really don't enjoy is hiking hard. As much as I try to use the proper technique the reality is that you have to be super fit to maintain it for a full race, so I gradually end up in bad position with the consequent pain and potential long term damage.

Do we need to find a way to limit how hard you can hike? Should we try and help those that are not super-fit, from not getting damaged (Yellowwelly,me etc....)? How about some restraining bars as used on the Cork 1720, SB20(ex SB3)? What current dinghy design could they be added to?

My damage occurred when I was a fit 15-17 year old- fortunately technique is part of the core training thesedays.   

Edited by yellowwelly - 01 Apr 14 at 1:41pm

There are lots of immensely comfortable hikers, the Finn being one of them. The problem lies in the fact that hiking 'properly' (to gain advantage from leverage using your body weight) is inherently uncomfortable. Not much you can do about that, just train the muscles you are going to use for this uncomfortable feat so that they don't hurt as much or cramp up so soon. No way round it. If you aren't going to hike for much more than 100yds up the first beat the question should be 'which boat is most comfortable to perch upon' 

Originally posted by boatshed Originally posted by rb_stretch it made me think whether it is ever possible to have a comfortable hiker. RS 300 ?

Tried one and no different to any other dinghy.

Didn't we have a thread similar to this before?

There are boats than ban hiking - the Foxer is one - but maybe it would be something that a keel boat like the K1 could have done and still offered a good performance.
How about a Mini SB20?