I know there are less people travelling, but are National Circuits dying out?

was never revised (due to few returns) they weren't enough to tempt me. 

I think clubs and classes are damned if they, damned if they don't, when it comes to binning off events last minute.

Attendances at what?

There are 38 on the waiting list - incredible.

http://www.rsaerosailing.org/index.asp?p=results&rid=3298" rel="nofollow - http://www.rsaerosailing.org/index.asp?p=results&rid=3298

I am a southerner, but one of my all time favourite venues was Tynemouth.  

If the success of a championship venue is driven by turnout, which imo it is, it baffles me why Classes go to venues that are unlikely to succeed on this KPI.

Personally I cannot see the appeal of Pwlhelli when there is such a great club with a great view 5 miles to the west that is not located in the middle of an industrial estate.

politics - throw the whinging northern b**tards and tight arse Scots a bone every few years, in turn remember to book the same week somewhere sunny with the Mrs and stock up browny points- knowing full well 'there's always next year' when it will return to somewhere far more salubrious down south.   

best post of the year so far!

Also interesting that they are choosing to allow rig swapping between events and scoring them on PY. This must mean the 'sailable weight' of the boat will drop and means you need at least 3 of the 3 rigs to be competitive.

Not really true class racing IMO.

Hear! Hear!

yep, I can quite imagine the response when asked to peel to the Number 2 Genoa, I'd asked the owner if our own class rules permitted it first, and secondly, wouldn't it be a little unfair on the poor chap behind us who could only afford one new sail this season.... 

However the boat was not sold to be raced like this IIRC. It was on the same model as Laser 4.7, Radial and Full rig. I.e. 3 different classes not 1 class with multiple rigs.

So the 5 at youth and diminutive sailors, the 7 at most of the sailing population and the 9 at the larger (or gung ho) guys.

Fair play had the class be launched as 1 class with 3 sail sizes but it was understood more to be 3 classes.

Plus you really cannot compare finghy racing with big boat racing until you get up to the levels of stuff like 18 footers with their varying rig sizes (which the class rules cater for).

I stand by what I said.

As for 1 sail for all conditions, I know 1 dinghy that does it very nicely thank you and performs well across most conditions.

Did Tynemouth in the 12's ... remember the Air Sea Rescue Helecopters on the course.

Sadly my favourite boatbuilder is no longer there ...

Either way, one boat with two or three sails is much cheaper than two boats which is the sensible alternative.

OTOH, don't all those 'sponsored' sailors race several classes anyway?

FWIW I've just bought a Blaze and will have both Blaze and Fire sails to race with. I think I'll be more competitive with the Fire but for lighter wind days having the option of the extra Blaze horsepower will be nice.

On the other hand Sam, earlier this year I walked away from the Raceboard class because they were allowing more and bigger sails, and there seemed to be no value in spending $6,000 just so we could go 1-2% quicker.

Surely it's not as simple as saying that allowing more rigs gets more people sailing, as others have said. Not everyone wants to spend more or have more gear to be competitive, nor is buying extra rigs necessarily the best way to do so. More sailing doesn't always mean more enjoyment if the other guys have such a large equipment advantage that you are not competing on an even playing field. If we want to make it a contest of bank balances, just turn up to the club with an accountant to check your net worth and don't bother to get wet. 

Chris 249, just as with everything else in the sport, there is little that is actually 'new'! I've got the original paperwork from the 'semi-official' 2 person performance boat Trials that were held at Itchenor SC between Loosedrecht and La Baule in the early 1950s. Back then of course dinghies still reefed or, in the case of 14s, dropped their genoa when going to windward in a strong breeze.

I was reading about how, with a forecast of strong breezes,  the 14 borrowed a suit of National 12 sails. This was clearly an accepted thing to do, for when John Westell was sailing his boat from Exmouth to Hunstanton for the POW event, he borrowed a suit of Nat 12 sails. Back to the Trials - the 14 was using the Nat 12s rig, so the FD borrowed the 14 sails....mix and match!

D 

DELETED

Yep, and Coronet used 14 sails for much (or most) of the next trials, and of course the canoes had been using multiple rigs for different conditions from about 1888, with the predecessors of the skiffs adopting multiple rigs about that time too.

I'd have to disagree with Jeffers, because you can have "true class racing" and still allow multiple sails and rigs. I was just using Sam's example, as it's a class we've both raced in, to make the point that allowing multiple rigs can also get to be very expensive and complicated.

The only time I've run a class it was a single-sail SMOD.  We had an issue with beginners being able to finish in high winds, so I commissioned a small high-wind one-design sail and we altered the rules to allow it to be used so that sailors could finish high-wind races.  We made changes to the points system so the sailors who didn't want the extra cost and hassle of buying a (very cheap) sail would remain competitive. Having only one sail wasn't perfect. Allowing multiple sails wasn't perfect. The compromise we ended up with wasn't perfect either!

To pose the question has racing now with the benefit of extensive safety cover and very efficient warm clothing lost sight of good seamanship? Seems to me the examples of using undersized sails in days of yore was a tribute to good sense rather than cheque book cheating by using optimum sails.

 

I gave up Raceboards when they dropped the 7.5m class (well, I continued the NW circuit as they stuck with 7.5m and finally sold my battered old Equipe II this year)

IIRC IYRU Int. Raceboards have never allowed custom boards and limit a racer to one board and two sails at a given event and the current max sail size is still 9.5m (since 2009 I think). I think Chris is in the US though so things may well be different that side of the pond.

The Raceboard class that has been around for years basically grew out of the early '80s  "Pan Am boards" (which had basically no rules at all) and then in 1985 the "Production class" created by the WSMA (ie the manufacturer's association, which also ran the pro World Cup), with the only real rule being that boards had to be mass produced.  I've pulled out an old article from '85, which shows that each sailor that Neil Pryde sponsored in the Euro Funboard Cup or "Production class" had 8 sails, and pros often had two boards.

The idea of people having to have 4-8 sails was obviously untenable as soon as Raceboards started to become widely popular and became an ISAF class, and therefore the early versions of the ISAF class rules were drafted to include a sail size limit and a sail number limit. 

PS - I checked yesterday about rig numbers. Turns out that I was wrong and that they still only allow two rigs during an event. The purchase of new rigs was to allow for the fact that they have increased the maximum sail area, leading some people to change their high-wind sail as well to maintain the correct spacing to allow them to sail across the full wind range. 

IIRC Keith and Ian along with Roger Tushingham and Martin Page were instrumental in the design of the 'Free Radical P.E.T' Div 1 board which cleaned up on the UK National circuit and I believe that was part of the reason the establishment banned custom boards when the Raceboard Class was mooted. Had the Free Radical boards been much more expensive than the production boards of the time that might have been defensible but they were actually cheaper (and, also IIRC, more durable). A great shame when they were disallowed.

I was hugely disappointed when the IYRU decided to discontinue the RB 7.5 class. As an amateur sailor with young children, a limited budget and limited sailing/training time I could just about manage to be competitive in the 7.5m class (using my biggest short board sail when it howled) but there was no way I could afford a 9.5 rig as well (or the time to increase my fitness to the level required). 

IMO the UKBSA should have gone for a IYRU Raceboard class and a UK 7.5m class (they had previously supported an Unlimited class alongside the IYRU 7.5m class) rather than retain the UL class alongside the 9.5m leaving the majority of UK RB sailors with a difficult and potentially expensive choice.......

Mutli rig boats are great for those that can best benefit from them (lightweights), but i guess if you aim it at that market then they will buy, nothing wrong with specialising at all.

I accept that this could be achieved by having different classes to choose from, but in these cases the chances are that you own both boats because they suit your weight.

I don't have much problem with the existence of Aero 5, 7 and 9, but I think that turnouts are quite larged up in their reporting, since most events are really three class events.

Chris J249,

I'm sorry but you're a bit off line there. yes, when Coronet was first launched, Max Johnson used John Westell's Int 14 rig because the 'new' rig wasn't yet ready. One of the reasons for the delay was that Westell was still experimenting - one example was that he only took the trapeze wire up to the inboard end of the spreader bracket. Not long after the boat was launched, it took part in the Round the Island dinghy race, where it came up against the prototype Osprey and some other new designs that were aimed at the Trials, such as Claude Nethercott's Marianne. Proctor had seen the value of the publicity that would come from winning the Race and had put a great deal of preparation into his rig, two forestays, one rigged with a genoa, the other with a jib (which brings the topic neatly back to multiple rigs).As they came along the back of the Island the wind was easterly, but with a west going ebb there is only one way to make progress; short tack along the shore. Proctor was sailing with an all star crew, 3 up - and had rigged the trapeze up to the hounds. Max Johnson, crewed by Westell struggled, finding it very hard to use the trapeze.

From the Island there was barely time to pack up before heading to La Baule and the Trials - where Coronet had her new rig and a correctly fitted trapeze, There is a lot more detail about how the Coronet rig came about (and what happened in the Trials....and what didn't happen, which is the real 'smoking gun') - this whole story, backed up by first person interviews and a great deal of private correspondence, now forms the opening Chapter of 'Simply the Best - the story of the 505' which is current the live project here in the office.

Wot 'e sez :) I was trying to say much the same thing but far less eloquently.....

#RB, Not sure I agree, surely having different sizes of sails increases the weight range for a class regardless if they have one PN or multiple?

#Oinks, Most doublehanders haf restrictions on the number of sails you can use at a regatta, just like singlehanders. The few exceptions like 18' skiffs prove the rule maybe?

Interesting. I'm going off the Yachting World report of the trials, where there is a pic of Coronet showing a small main and the small jib tacked aft of the stem, and has a caption saying it's an Int 14 main. The article says that she only used full-size sails on a couple of days in the trials. 

Unfortunately, I can't find who wrote the article but it is certainly detailed. I had the impression that it may have been Proctor, who was writing for YW at the time and would be a very good authority. I'll see if I can find out next time I am near the Maritime Museum's library.

Chris 249,

At the risk of thread hijacking..... "yes but no but". There was little that happened by chance with Coronet and I would caution that not everything that is in the YW article may be taken as gospel. Even back then the 'law of vested interests' held sway.....

Although I've not had the final sign off on this, it looks as I will get the job of researching and then presenting the Proctor Centenary story around the UK in 2018 - much as I did in 2012 with the Holt Centenary. I'm already stuck into this story so have a reasonable perspective of things from Proctor's viewpoint. What is crucial to the story is not IP's comments, but the exchanges of correspondence with Peter Scott and others.... for that is where the story really lies!

D

I believe the single string rake is now pretty mature in terms of development. The Merlins did it first IIRC and other classes that allow on the water raking have followed.

I don't think or say that much of what happened with Coronet was by chance, and any use of an I-14 rig seems to sit pretty neatly with the story of the development from Coronet to 505, including Westell's article on it. As always, I'll be very interested to get your views. We are both interested in seriously studying the history, with you being more specialised at a certain country and time.

I don't take much as gospel....that's why at work we will do things like call in the forensic lab to examine dubious documents, or spend mind-numbing hours examining witnesses and scenes.  All the information we ever get has limitations, but either the whole wider story of dinghy history is left ignored, or we get on doing what we can with what is practical to get, such as detailed articles that are consistent with the other published information. 

Pretty much so, there seems to be a decent standard design now and most systems are built to it. Once set up you have a loop in the boat, you pull it one way to pull the mast aft, pull it the other way to pull the mast back upright.

Agree the set up takes a bit of thinking out but once it's done you can forget about how it works, just concentrate on the fact it works

Allot of the lighter crew/helms in the Scorpion fleet usually sail with a little rake in normal conditions only going upright in very light winds.It much better than having to make a decision on the bank as to either have the big sail or the small sail then being out on the race course realising you made the wrong call whilst you are standing on your up turned hull

Certainly cheaper than having to sets of sails too

 

Regarding choosing the right sail, when I was racing windsurfers we had a saying, "if you only have one sail it must be the right one"..... In practice My Demon 7.5 VG5 race sail was considered competitive in 3-30 knots (Sean Cox. the designer's claim) I must admit to finding it a handful in much more than 20 knots but could usually complete the course in 25 if it picked up. I'd rather be on a more high wind design though if that happened. As a consequence I had some days where I chose wrong and it cost me places. All part of the game TBH and it did mean we got good racing in 3-30 knots.

I don't think making a collection of events a circuit makes a great deal of difference as sailors are either able or want to go to an event independent of that. However I do think the interest added by combining to two Circuits centrally in the Midlands did help produce the larger end of season turnouts with sailors coming from as far afield as Yorkshire, the South and the East coasts at the end of the year.

I used to go better in the light stuff, and if you've ever met me you'll know I a bit of a lardarse. Now I only think I did so well due to that principle of momentum....

To be fair, lower wind limits have also been suggested by people who see that the future of the sport is all about spectacular high-speed sailing in ideal conditions.  They are just as wrong as the people you mention, but it's a different type of wrong.

 
Sadly, I have to admit I used to advocate lower wind limits for a while as a teenager, for the exact reason you give....it just took me a while to admit that.

Absolutely right GRF, a few years ago I trekked all the way to Ullswater one sunny Sunday to be greeted by a perfect 5-6 knot breeze..... racing was cancelled because the f*@!ing Formula boys thought it was too light for their 6 knot minimum. No surprise that Raceboard attendance is 4-5 times that of FW these days (but, sadly, too late to save windsurfing club racing).

I raced the Blaze in a drifter on Sunday, battered old original Sobstadt sail, original centre mainsheet, never sailed the beast before.... Had a lovely afternoon, came last in the handicap fleet but was improving by the end and finished in front of the Enterprises and L2k over the water. New sail tomorrow and off the boom sheeting ready to fit..... I'll do better next week (except it's forecast to blow its t!ts off, more in the boats comfort zone but well out of mine)......

+1 Every sailor has his day, the big guys do well when it blows, the lightweights in marginal conditions and the wily old salt  (regardless of weight) when it's light. If we could just get over ourselves and accept we have strengths and weaknesses (both skill and physique related) we might just enjoy the racing whatever the weather.

 that's the issue  ... 

someone who is  fit enough and  has good enough technique can hold onto the  same rig as  the 'fatties' even if they are a stone or two underweight   and   any losses  upwind  are made back off the wind 

such is the nature of the beast  -  and why the N12 and the MR  are  the basis of  a good number of derivative  ODs    (Lark, RS200, RS400 to name just three off the top of the head  never  mind the   stem / forefoot design to maximise lwl and  basic hull forms)

True but the fitness/strength/power to weight issue is separate matter, a fit small guy will beat an unfair one as a fit big guy will beat an unfit big guy, sailing skill being equal. The extra fitness allows the sailor to make better use of his weight when it's windy and be more agile around the boat when it isn't, win win. 

IMHO multiple rigs are not the issue, you might as well ban boats that suit lightweights because if a heavyweight tries to race one he's at a disadvantage. If it bothers you and you are a larger gent then buy a boat that suits your physique or go on a diet (big skinny guys win out both ways). The handicap's will work themselves out in a couple of years and if the Aero settles on one class with three rigs or a single multi rig class it will be reflected in the returns.

Completely valid points, both of them. The "but" is that experience seems to say that if a class are deciding whether to have a higher wind minimum, then they should accept that years of experience indicates that it appears to hurt class numbers.