As for the carbon spars and lower hull weight, I’d get an Aero/Zero/OK if I wanted that. Or maybe a Laser as of next year. 

Would the carbon boom mean a new, lose footed, sail?  Outhauls on carbon booms never work as well in my experience (too much friction in clew straps) and a carbon mast would be higher maintenance if left up, more aggro to rig if taken down and probably reduce optimal crew weight.  

Folk don’t buy the Solo because it is the fastest or sexiest, they buy it because it is practical.  Changes to make it more practical I might support, others I don’t. What are the reasons for the proposed changes?

People don't buy solos because they are fast modern and "sexy"; they buy them because they are either too old to sail anything else or fancy winning a cup in a big fleet by beating lots of old folks.

There are a couple at my club, one beautiful wooden one and a couple of grp.

I think you'll find this post fairly miss informed looked the average age of the top 10 of this years nationals

How modern can a boat designed in the 1950s look, unless it gets a new hull, complete new rig, new deck, new foils and just keeps the same mainsheet block?

Whereas you buy Javs because you fancy winning a cup in a small fleet by beating a few old folks?  :-)

I dont see the coffee table mod or the transom mod as being game changing and they should really just do it IMO.

Carbon boom - I cant see a good reason not to do this these days, but keep the tracked foot for the foreseeable future.

Carbon mast. Not yet.

Weight reduction. No. don't bother.

But would binning the correctors make a new Solo cheaper? Corrector weights can't cost more than £30 with scrap lead at £1.25/kg and you are only paying for them once (on a new boat costing nearly £8k).

Wooden boats should and do remain as an option.

Carbon masts imo would be great for those with deep pockets, but by the time that you have bought the matching sail this could be £2.5 to retro fit, and will add at least £1k to the new boat price.  The mast that the Dutch showed at Carnac was agricultural and nothing like the quality of the Carbon masts seen on Phantoms or Merlins, both of which have supply issues.  IMO this change is a complete non starter and would kill the class.

Transom change ... this would simplify the build and reduce costs, not a bad thing.  Talk of fixed rudders could be an undesirable consequence, the current lifting rudders are well engineered, light and solid in a breeze.  Personally I think lifting rudders should be compulsory.

I am very pro the flooding tank (as an option) and modifying the coffee table; anything that can be done to help all of us to sail into old age is a bonus and should be encouraged.  

A cheaper solution to the latter would be to allow the mast step to be raised by 50mm or possibly a mm for every year of the owners age!

If the flooding tank would give sailors more confidence about righting a capsized boat, then this has to be a good thing.

There are a number of tongue in cheek jibes at the aging Solo community, in truth many of the baby booming sailors of the late sixties through to the early eighties have got Solos and the racing is the most fun that I have had in years.

Hopefully the NSCA will come to a quick decision on how best to proceed, since I suspect that many new entrants to the class will be waiting to see what happens, which isn’t great for our builders.

No, that would make sense to me too.

Don’t think that a loose foot main is too much of an issue from a performance perspective, but I don’t think carbon really has a place with the Solo on cost grounds.

Nor am I convinced that sailors will go for more rake, at the most extreme upwind settings you compromise downwind speed, and the only people this really works for is the sailors who can get clear enough at the windward mark and are far enough ahead not to get hauled in.

Jim’s suggestion is a good one and I made this suggestion in the Survey Monkey questionnaire.

As for loose footed sail, why not? That bit of material in the foot is a waste of time, does nothing other than flap about. Perhaps a carbon boom would be a benefit, doesn't hurt so much on the bonce when you get it wrong, plus it stays out where you put it on the run. However it is really necessary other than that? Probably not.

As for the mast, it seems that there are enough options for all weights the Solo supports, but I bet you that if you go carbon you'll end up with lighter and lighter helms in the class, good for them but could alienate the heavier ones. Would be easier to handle on shore though however would ramp the costs up intensely. Certainly in the Phantoms you've got to have "the" mast and thats the cost of a decent second hand boat. Do you want that? I'd stick with the ali one you've already got. 

You missed my point a little  Every boat has to gently updated . Not to make it look brand new but to stop it looking old and out of date. 

I sail in a class that was designed in 1932, but that doesn’t mean it still has to  solid wood decks and a wood mast and boom.  It’s had two weight reductions, can be made out of frp and can have carbon masts and boom. 

Whats needed to put that to bed is a commitment that there will be no further rig changes for a minimum of - say - 5 years.

The tracks are glued on and a clew strap would still be needed. It makes attaching the kicker and mainsheet blocks more complex but its do able. Other classes do it.

However with the loose foot pulled tight, the boom still forms and end plate, and there is an opportunist to get some unmeasured sail area under the boom when sailing downwind.

Fitting out a carbon boom will normally require sailcloth or webbing straps for the kicker and mainsheet take off and a track and associated blocks for the outhaul, I would suggest that these will cost a lot more than the standard Selden set up.

I guess that a carbon boom will be kinder on the head, having less hard corners, and being lighter it carries less momentum, but it will be more expensive.

you don't need a track for the outhaul, a looped strap or rope on the clew will suffice. You are also right that a webbed strap will do for the main and kicker take-off. Its position is controlled by a rope to the end of the boom. Pretty simple and cheap, plus no holes in the boom to create stress points. 

As the for lens foot creating an end plate, etc, does it really make that much difference on a slower boat like a Solo? Also its not controlled either, as it changes shape as you play with the outhaul. In a lot of cases its such a flimsy material I cannot see that it provides any end plate effect. Its about getting the lightest bit of material in place to meet the rules, while in effect attempting to not actually being there. It just seems like a fairly useless piece of material getting in the way adding a little more expense to a sail. In fact I expect that in most cases you could just cut it off if you swap to a carbon boom, negating the need to buy a new sail. Would it make that much difference?

As for updating the boat, etc, the Solo seems fairly sucessful without the need to constantly update. Not keeping up with the Joneses seems to be a good thing for it.

Yep I think the book was a summary of Antipodean thinking at that time and rolled out many Cherub and Bethwaite ideas which were subsequently adopted in the Northern Hemisphere ... loose foots, close sheeting, mast struts and daggerboards were all in there.

I guess most of this was featured on Flat Stanley, Jim may well advise if these were on earlier Cherubs.

 

Don't ever seem to have an issue with the outhaul on my phantom david. 

Cost is certainly an issue. On P&B the SS ali boom is £172 and the Phantom carbon SS is £580.

Mast wise, the Solo tapered is £707 whereas the Phantom cheapest is £1700. 

Bearing those sorts of costs in mind, what is the point of change? You ain't going to magic up a huge performance increase that is justified by that sort of price increase. 

No, I didn't miss the point. Probably we are just coming from different angles. I tend to look at the boat's basic design more; things like hull rocker, bow angles, overall configuration and style, leach outline and other aspects of rig design, etc.  If you're looking at an older class like Solo, your BM, and plenty of my own classes from that angle, no amount of updating is going to disguise the fact that the basic design came from decades ago. Even if you got someone to make a full carbon BM, Solo, Laser or Tasar and gave it leading-edge 2019 spars, fittings and sails it still wouldn't alter the fact that they are now old designs and look "out of date" from some points of view because of the age of their hull design. Even a Bladerider foiling Moth or a 2015 foiling A Class looks "out of date" in some ways, and no amount of small modification is going to change that.

BUT let me make it clear, I don't think there is a single thing wrong with being "out of date". It's a bit like a masterpiece of classical art or architecture or a classic car; the fact that something was designed years ago does not make it inferior. A boat like yours seems to achieve its purpose brilliantly and the fact that its basic design clearly shows its age does nothing to affect that.

The committee can make that commitment.

The membership can propose what they like.

The bottom line is that boats prior to around 4900 do not have the bulkhead sufficiently far forward to to allow current mast rakes and therefore be competitive so in my view these are already limited to fairly low competition club racing anyway and their price reflects this. I would be pretty happy to line up with my 5407 boat against a new one with these changes and don't think I would be disadvantaged to the point where I was forced to buy a new one. 

It could be argued that the flooding tanks will result in more water post capsize in the boat so unless mandatory would not be a decision for those able to recover the boat as it would be seen as a competitive disadvantage albeit the top guys don't capsize much.  

Yep I was thinking the same - my H2 has flooding side tanks which do make capsizes so much easier but it takes less than a minute for the boat to be dry post recovery due to it all going out the back!

Probably the most common boat that people had before their H2 was a Solo. People want a boat they can sit in rather than scrabble around on their knees like their solo but which goes faster and carries more weight than the solo (lets face it, we are all getting heavier than we were in the 1970s!). Fleet seems to be either early retirees coming from Solos or else younger helms looking for something different that responds to being sailed hard - was great to see Jack Holden from the RS400 fleet at our Nationals last weekend.

If the aim is to expand the class then asking current owners what is needed boat wise is not necessarily the right path  (ask those who don't sail it now !)  and this is the problem with many traditonal classes doing reviews like this.  Few want to potentially devalue their current investment.  For the Solo additonal take-up  may not be the issue as it enjoys good support already ...  

So what about 'modernisation' for the current owners ?  My bet is most will inevitably be conservative so the class is unlikely to change much ....  What would make it nicer ... er at least in my opinion ?   Not too much needed really is the basic answer.  I would however go for a loose footed sail on a carbon boom ... but just stick with the alloy mast on cost grounds.  Why tubular carbon boom ?  Less mass flying around in each gybe  (good return on the upgrade cost imo) so fewer capsizes possibly and a lot less 'pain' when you do catch your head on the boom (since you do need to go for a lot of rig rake these days).  Leave most of the rest alone ... it is an old 'traditional' design and too much expensive lipstick won't change that.  Whatever the class goes for make sure that 'older' boats can still be as competitive as before ... ie - Don't dabble with the hull too much and any changes should be retro-fittable to earlier hulls. 

To many changes to the already relatively expensive Solo will have people leaving the class and will not attract and one to the class. 

At least if you go carbon rig anybody can buy one and be just as fast as the top guys but 3kg weight reduction is just pointless IMHO........

The carrying of lead is the most sensible aspect of one designs. It enables someone to dip into the class and buy an older boat and compete roughly on equal term with newer hotshots.

I really really really gets me angry that classes are run for the guys in the top 20% with up to date kit. Sailors battling it out in the bottom 20% are equally valid and their experience and enjoyment of the race equally, if not more important, that of the guys at the top. 

Any class that’s prime objective is that any boat less than ten years on is still competitive within top 20% and twenty year old boats within  top 50% deserves to wither and die. 

The problem is that Joe Q Clubsailor with his older Solo is unlikely to be a member of the Class Association. So when this kind of thing get bought up only those who are get to vote on them (and rightly so). As that is usually those who do championship events and open meetings it will normally mean those with newer kit that has the relevant amount of lead that can removed. I am sure there will also be a way to remove the 'coffee table' on older boats (not sure what this would weigh but it could be a proportion of the 3kg drop meaning front of the fleet boats will still carry lead). The other thing it could also lead to is lighter construction as if they dont change the 'max correctors' allowance then boat builders will take material out of other areas and keep the lead at the max.

 

From a construction perspective reducing weight should not prove a problem, the bottom of the coffee table and mainsheet capping is full of clinker, anyone who has tried to drill into it will attest.

That would keep those boats competitive 

When boats lasted a couple of seasons as a really competitive package minor, ongoing change was more accepted. My boat is now 16 years old and cosmetically showing her age. Structurally - sound as a pound. Yes - the latest iterations may be a few % earlier to plane, or a few % stiffer, but the biggest problem on the race course, for me, is the nut on the tiller.

You will piss off the builders because no one is going to buy a new solo anytime soon knowing a new version is coming in a year or so and then more potential changes after that. 

You will piss off the owners that have just purchased new boats because all of a sudden their resale value has dramatically dropped because it's not a new design boat.

You will piss off the owners of perfectly competitive older boats that have no correctors or have removed some to keep it on weight because new boats will come in at 3kg less.

You will piss off any solo owner that isn't planning on shelling out 10k out for a new design boat anytime soon because all of a sudden new boats will appear that are lighter, easier to recover from a capsize, more comfortable to sail etc. because when they purchased their boat they thought they were getting a one design boat.

All for what making the boat slightly better. There is a reason the solo is the second most popular class in the country, it's design is a winning formula and people that own them accept it has its flaws in the knowledge they are all in the same boat.

"Problem with the Solo Class Association is that there is no provision for postal voting and AGMs are held at the Nationals, which is not a representative sample of the majority of the membership" (David yacht)

Am I correct in thinking that the questionnaire was sent out to gauge opinion and the actual decision is going to be taken at the AGM?

I assume that more questionnaires were sent out than there will be attendances at the AGM?

This means that many members who have expressed an opinion will not be able to vote? Is this correct?

If this is correct I find it almost unbelievable. I'm a member of two Unions. I use postal votes. That is Democratic. Seems like the Solo class needs a democratic overhaul or they will be like my Council whose  Officers actually take all the decisions with Councilors comming along for the ride and "democracy" becomming a farce. (I have attended two Council meetings this week to do with major planning issues)

exactly that ... 

Except there are plenty of competitive boats that have no lead or reduced lead

Now if they were considering shaving 20kg off that would really make a difference 

Because then it would be made of carbon and be much more expensive.....right?

Well said.

Arguably most of the sport has still failed to get its head around the enormous lifespan of the boats that have been built over the past couple of decades.  In many ways they are seen as a problem rather than an asset to the sport. Keeping old boats competitive must be the easiest way to reduce costs, which is one of the sport's greatest problems.

   

Spot on 

Touche.  Excellent snarky reply to my snarky comment.  :¬)

The point of the (also overweight and old-fashioned) Javelin is certainly not winning cups (not in my case anyway), it's that it's fast and hard work and will chuck you in the water if you get it wrong.  A couple of three sail planing reaches linked by a well excecuted roll gybe leaves me high on adrenaline for days!  Without that thrill, may as well just sit at home and do big fleet tactical racing on SailX.  I'm sure there are foiling moth and 49er sailers who feel the same way about Javelins!!

Spot on, 

Nothing that the Solo or any other originally wood one design can do to will bring it close to a design today so keep to the spirit of the original and use corrects to keep older boats competitive as they gain a few pounds. 

In my experience the current generation of FRP boats are considerably quicker than the more traditional boats. Combine that with a sail development and the 'optimised' hulls means the boat is a fair bit quicker that the PY would suggest.

The suggested changes my exacerbate that a little more. However with so many older boats still racing at club level week in, week out the PY wont catch up. The Fireball PY is only just starting to level out following the 'wide bow' revolution nearly 20 years ago.