He's probably won the lot ... but a National Class only has one "Championship" the rest are just other major events ... lets not debase the kudos that goes with being the champion ...

a bit like Ben Ainslie's initial endorsement of the RS Aero that was later redacted?

Ummmm, how many of those people who rate Salcombe Week that highly have done;

America's Cup;

Olympics;

Moth/Melges/Farr 40/Dragon/Etchells/505/Laser/470/F18/Kona/Hobie 16 etc worlds?

Volvo

Windsurfing world cup or RSX Worlds

etc etc etc?

To claim that one race in a class that, while very good, is restricted to one country is "one of the hardest to win in any class" seems to be over-egging it. Merlin sailors from one countryrare extremely unlikely to be so much smarter that they can sail part time and still be harder to beat than the full-time sailors from just about every major sailing nation, as you find in some other classes.

Sure, Salcombe Week would be extremely hard to win, but it's far from the only such lesser-known but hot event. There are lesser-known regattas where guys who have been top 4 in the Lasers and top 2 in the America''s Cup struggle, even after years of experience in the class in question.

Sure, people in the Merlins will list names as if to say that they demonstrate how good the class it - but so can those from many other classes in other countries. Andy Davis is no doubt an excellent sailor - but what is there in his record to show that he is better than Chris Dance or Tito Gonzales, who come from classes that don't seem to make such claims?** 

How many people who have done Salcombe Week know how it compares to the US Thistle titles, or the Australian Sharpie championships, the NZ Sunbursts, or perhaps the Bavarian Pirat Title* or one of the many other lesser-known hot regional classes? I sail in a class that normally has 3 or 4 Olympians (past and present) at its titles and most people in the world wouldn't know it exists.  I'm not saying it's tougher to win than Salcombe Week, but the point is that it's probably improbable that anyone can even list all the regattas that can claim to have good fleets, much less work out which one is harder to win.

I have an old mag where the Merlin fleet claimed to be possibly the hottest in the world. It was an arrogant and jingoistic thing to say when classes like Finns had people with Elvstrom racing, and it seems as if nothing has changed. 

Oh, and on this topic I do apologise for the Aussies who have beaten their chests about skiffs over the years, but the fact that we can be one-eyed doesn't excuse it happening elsewhere.

EDITED to lighten up.  :-)

* Ok, this one is a guess!  :-)

** Actually, some of the classes they sail in also over-egg the publicity, but not in the same way IMHO.

And, being an Aussie, I've seen it from the inside so much because of the way some skiffies carried on in the past that I may be highly sensitive to it!  When the 49er was announced as an Olympic class, some of our one-eyed commentators claimed that we were a dead cert to clean up the gold for several Olympiads....in fact our skiffies were cleaned up by Brits, Yanks and Finns for two Olympiads, which underlined how weak some claims to superiority can be.

EDIT - and some may say because of my jobs I've spouted rubbish for a living, so maybe it's just professional jealousy!  When you want someone to talk rot you should pay for it.....

Oooohhhh ....

No-one is sneering just poking fun at the over egging of the custard ...

 

 

and not a single exaggerated claim there Rupert.

Careful JimC many Merlin sailors will burn you at the stake for such a suggestion ... don't you realise Merlins are the very Everest of dinghy sailing?

Anyway - lets see some other gems ...

As one who has previously done just this in order to fund expensive sailing campaigns, I would say in defence that trying to get meaningful quotes out of people is stupidly hard.  If they do deign to provide something it is usually mumbo jumbo jargon or barely literate.  So yes we do make up the quotes, if only to preserve our own sanity plus the reputation of the person seemingly quoting.

Sorry.

Oh, and Chris 249, come and meet Nick Craig.

Definitely.

Nick is one of the most talented amateur dinghy sailors on the planet and is consistently at the top of any fleet he sails in.

I seem to recall he went to a Finn Gold Cup a couple of years back and gave a good account of himself (being up against professional sailors).

Top of it all he is a nice guy.

don't worry Jim... no one hates you.  In fact, I quite agree with you on this thread... well the OP bit anyway.  

 

As for the Merlin, if any class I happen to be sailing can generate half the credibility of the Merlin Rocket then I'd be a happy boy being brutally honest.  Secondly I don't really see Taxi's results as anything like hyped compared to some of the crap we're expected to endure from those selling their wares to us.  Quite contrary, HD Sails don't do fan boys, they just make quality kit.

Sailing is something I quite enjoy being free from hype and nonsense of our the rest of our lives.  Long may it continue.  

To be fair writing quotes is standard practice but what should also be standard practice is getting the person for whom you may have written a quote to approve it.

If you do a release and write a quote for someone and don't ask them to review you are heading for trouble.

On the subject of Andy Davies, he's now done several sail repairs for me, the last one being on a rust stained manky  Sprog mainsail.  He did a fantastic job at a bargain price.  The other jobs were on my D One mainsail.  Again quality work with a great appraisal of the state of the sail, all at a great price.  He is clearly a craftsman and has a really good attitude.

 

I'd love to meet Nick Craig - he's an inspirational sailor and person, and by coincidence the other day I was thinking of starting a "NC for ISAF Sailor of the Year" thread.  But the fact that Nick is a brilliant sailor does nothing to prove that the regattas he sails in are any harder to win than many other regattas in other classes and other places. There are many other brilliant sailors who sail other regattas in other classes, and there are many lesser-known classes in which you have to beat Olympians, America's Cup sailors and pros to win. Why are they supposedly easier to beat than Merlin sailors?

 

The earlier post was very complimentary about the Merlins at Salcombe; it said it was "veary good", "extremely hard to win" and "a hot event", but it's one hell of a long way from being a great class to being one of the toughest classes or events in the world, as the Merlins have occasionally claimed over the years.  And Andy Davis is doubtless an outstanding sailor, but that doesn't mean that a class that contains him is better than the many other classes containing outstanding sailors.

 

 

 

 

 

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Merlin is the alcoholics class of choice, always has been...

One of my best Salcombe Merlin Week memories was when crewing in a knackered old boat, wooden decks lifting off and borrowed sails, for a well known Thames Rater sailor.  I think that we walked out of the Salcombe Hotel late bar somewhat the worse for wear straight to the boat, then sailed a windy beat rounding the first mark with a considerable lead ... Best Merlin Week result I ever had!

I don't know if I've ever sailed a class in which some people didn't say "this is one of the toughest classes with some of the best sailors", and they can't all have been right!

yes but if you were there doing it at least you were old enough to experience how sh*te reality really was .... those of us at impressional ages (< 40 years old now) could only stare on in wonderment from those body disfiguring Laser side decks grimacing through the pain, clinging on to one hope - one dream - that being, if I work hard at school and get good grades, one day I'll have a boat as cool as those guys in their Iso.  

I wish I had been more brand aware back then.... always was just another b**tard Topper.

 

And the assymetric hype in dinghies was matched at the time by the water-ballast hype in big boats and the sportsboat hype in small yachts.

 

Twenty years on, and shifting ballast boats, skiffs and the more extreme sportsboats still only make up a small sector of the market, with the apparent exception of the USA and perhaps Italy - and average white boat cruiser/racers are everywhere.

 

We may not have learned anything about hype. Wonderful as foilers may be, the growth in overall fleet numbers outside of the UK and Oz seems to be pretty small according to reports presented at the class AGM. The foiling R Class in NZ attracted a sad 6 or 7 boats to its last nationals, which is a bit of a tragedy for what used to be a popular and leading edge class.

 

The other current hype is arguably the "shift" to multis. It's hard to find evidence that they are doing anything more than quietly climbing out of a trough that saw them lose market share in many places.  The hype of a shift to multis is being generated by people who don't seem to have heard of the size and strength of classes like Formula 1 (85 footers), Formula 40, Micros etc in earlier eras.

 

Meanwhile the *eros seem to be getting ready to become more popular in their first year or two than the foilers have become in a decade of hype.

 

And speaking of RS success and the assy hype - given the collapse of most of the hyped "skiffs" of the '90s, what would have happened if the 400 hadn't been around to show that people would buy new boats that didn't adopt the skiff hype?  Was the 400 enormously influential in showing the industry that people generally preferred "non skiffs"?

 

 

 

".... it still is the fastest non-trapeze singlehanded dinghy. An ultimate racing machine...."

 

http://www.finnwelle.de/finndinghy.html" rel="nofollow - http://www.finnwelle.de/finndinghy.html

 

But did raise a smile though...

Well that one has to be locked in a time warp ...

" there’s been a massive amount of interest in the forums in the Rainmaker saga, with a small but vocal number of you complaining that you weren’t getting ‘the whole story.’  We have some advice for you: Get over it, because 15 years ago, you wouldn’t have heard about it at all. "

Oh, rubbish we wouldn't have heard about it 15 years ago.  Earlier incidents involving the loss of boats have lead to articles that included detailed information on the scantlings of the boats involved and pages of other detailed analysis of the underlying reasons.

And while on the subject.....looking at the SA mini-spat between the fans of the various *eros one can see people calling for an end to negative posts bashing one or the other of the classes. That's great - but how come the people who are against coming out against class-bashing are sometimes glad to bash established classes?

One place I wouldn't have sex is next to my good dinghy sails.... you don't want to crush them in the excitement, and battens and cringles could get into all sort of uncomfortable places.

Big boat spinnakers, on the other hand.....

because it's fun to play rebellion against establishment and authority... a bit like getting all 'animal rights' on the hunting lobby 'round here.  

Watching them respond with their bullsh*t justification is just good entertainment value, especially when they take you really seriously.  In truth I couldn't give a damn what they do with their weekend and I certainly couldn't give two sh*ts about the vermin they chase around fields on horseback with a pack of dogs of their leashes, but I'd have a lot more respect for them for saying 'f**k off, we like it' than all the pro-hunt rationale they come out with.

Here's anther good one, by one of your fellow countrymen:

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