Looks fun, is it the way to go? Is it banned already?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGowhQe7-c

I can see loads of advantages and a few minor problems, it would certainly add to the spectator value of the sport as sailors approach the skill level of gymnasts.

Think how sailing clothing design would change. Shoulder pads, climbing pegs on the side of the crews wetsuits, innovations galore.

Finally should you put the bigger sailor on top of the little one or vice-versa, or is it best to swap positions regularly and have two sailor of the same build.

Will pyhsios like it, looks like a good way to pick up back injuries.

I always wondered if IC sailors were allowed to trapeze of the end of the seat......

I'm fairly sure there's still new footage of Chesty snapping two centreboards up on YT. Those who were there are definite that the loads were greatly increased and that the wider wings were unmanageable in normal shiftier conditions.

The comments by Bieker were matched by ones about Bieker, to the tune of "Paul said that adding wings to the rudders would just make the boats faster, then we got to chuck our hulls" because changing one design parameter tends to change the rest.

Riv (as original poster)…..this was pretty much the 'meat' in my topic at the Dinghy Show, when I was discussing the development of the performance single hander.  The conclusion was a question - in boats such as the Musto Skiff, have single handers reached a final plateau of development. You can't add in any more sail, because there is not a lot more in the way of righting moment to be had. Way back in the day, Elvstrom did try a single hander that had a massively long plank, but very quickly binned the idea as 'unsailable'. There was talk a couple of years ago of a boat based on the B14 hull that would have wide racks... I don't think it went very far and I can't say if it used the trapeze as well, but the physics suggest against it, As you move further outboard from the centreline, the angle subtended between the trapeze wire and the mast increases, with being out on the wire becoming ever more difficult. Right back in the early days, the Coronet (which begat the 5o5) had a trapeze, but with the take off for the wires being at spreader height, which simply didn't work. In the famous Round the Island dinghy race, Coronet lost out big time to Osprey, which had the trapeze wires taken up to the hounds and John Westell, who was crewing on Coronet, had to watch at the ease with which Cliff Norbury on Osprey could trapeze and tack  as they slogged along the beat from St. Cats Point to Sandown. So back to that all important question - could you make an even more extreme single handed boat.... yes of course, but who would actually be able to sail such a boat? Why look at a boat that is only applicable to a small number of super elite sailors, when boats like the IC and MPS offer peak performance today as part of an established international circuit!

Dougal

Rupert,

How right you are! The early Mk 1 Rondars could be a pig and if you really had an early one, with the x-profile traveller track running right across the cockpit, then you will still be carrying the scars to today! Yet the Contender was a game changer, then in quite quick succession you had the 600, then the 700/MPS - each changed the game in it's own way. But the important thing in all of this - as I stressed in the talk, was that these superb boats represented something of a step function. 

So yes, you could tweak the MPS or, as I alluded to, come up with something even more extreme, but the reality of the sport today is that further step functions just aren't there anymore (unless you subscribe to the I-GRF belief in building boats from exotic materials such as floatarium).The proof comes from the International Moths who went down this route, as boats got ever more extreme (I was there when Ian Ridge made a hull out of the remains of a Unicorn hull) and in a recent thread elsewhere, it was widely accepted that these super-skinny lowriders, with an alloy rig, were the hardest of all the dinghies to sail....but as you pointed out, people did master them eventually. However, without suspending the laws of nature, I can't see where anything else is going to come from!

Dougal

https://www.facebook.com/WASZP.UK/videos/2734216283293794/" rel="nofollow - https://www.facebook.com/WASZP.UK/videos/2734216283293794/

The initial reason for the post was the creation of a spectacle.

I've been thinking about what Sport means, and concluded that Sporting activities that are televised for the mass market are now not sport but branches of the entertainment industry.

Considering only the top level of Sailing Entertainment that is the Olympics and the need to drive views/clicks/hits to profit from it; then why not allow extreme sporting aspects such as tower trapezing  only at the top level?

Falls will be more interesting and frequent. Kiting is in the Olympics why should not dinghy sailing at the elite professional level not follow suit in creating a risk based spectacle?

Should not elite professional Olympic dinghy sailing demand the consistent demonstration of the  highest physical skills as in Olympic gymnastics?

It isn't a sport at all, at least not from any definition of 'sport' I have ever heard

The 100m is one of the major events of the games, and is simple in the extreme. Not sure gimmicks make an Olympic sport, but simple, human endeavour and greatness. For me, the great sports are those with history. The athletics don't chop and change, saying that the 100m is out of date. Stick with some classic events where history shines through.

The attraction of the Olympics is in the variety and diversity of sporting endeavour on display, reducing it all to a spectacle is missing the point (yes, ok, I know that's what to was when the Greeks and Romans were doing it but.....). There are plenty os 'spectacle sports' available without destroying the principles of Olympic competition.

That's bad enough when trapezeing 'normally' 

Hey - I live within sight of the cheese rolling hill 

Umm... the 'Emsley Carr Mile' is run ever year and has been since 1953. And is a rather prestigious race.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emsley_Carr_Mile" rel="nofollow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emsley_Carr_Mile

When boats like the Contender were being developed, there was very little in the way of small singlehanded sailing craft that was faster.  Singlehanded cats were quite rare, perhaps because early cats had tacking issues and therefore designers tended to put jibs on them.  The A class as we know it came to being pretty much around the same time as the Contender, but were arguably more of a leap into the unknown.  As we all know there was also the IC, but that was a very small and low-profile class, which says something in itself about the priorities of dinghy sailing in its boomtime.

In contrast, today there are highly developed cats, foiling cats, kites and boards that are all arguably normally as fast or faster than any dinghy - perhaps even Moths.  So the dinghy is no longer, perhaps, the leading edge of sailing craft on water. Given that, trying to make the fastest dinghy may no longer be all that logical. If you want to go really fast in a small sailing craft then the kitefoiler may be the logical way to go, and even the Moth an also-ran.  So once you are giving up on the dream of leading-edge performance, it just makes sense to concentrate on the other qualities that dinghies do so well, like being fun in light winds and practical.  Chasing extremes like tower trapezing doesn't fit into that paradigm.

Unicorn a class cat 1967 , contender 1967 . First appeared 

Just saying ! I’ve had two contenders 2 unicorns and 1 or arguably 3 A class as unicorn is an A 

Yes, the Unicorn, Australis and others appeared in around 1967, but they seem to have been a very rapid and major leap forward from B-Lions and other earlier As.  A couple of years before that, Elvstrom had already shown raced the Trapez and David Thomas had raced the Unit.  I'm pretty damn sure that the pre-1967 cats were generally cruder and less evolved in many ways than the pre-1967 monos that people were familiar with. 

The point was that in 1967, many people were familiar with fairly well evolved monos but there were far fewer well evolved cats. A few As, a tiny number of Cs and some Bs were well on the way to becoming fantastic boats but they were a tiny minority. Some guys I knew who had Cs at that time (ie Crowther and Haines) spoke of them as being very undeveloped although a couple of them were better.

My father was an early cat sailor. If the boat he sailed wasn't a poor tacker (according to its very successful designer, Cunningham) he may have lived a lot longer, so the tacking of early cats is something I'm very aware of.  And I've been a clubmate of Steve Brewin and Andrew Landenberger who has you know have won more than one A worlds, but the fact is that while the As are wondrous creations they do tack slower than most monos.  Last season when Landy Jnr and Snr raced with us on our small inland lake, we had to give them a 16% yardstick reduction to make them competitive with the Lasers and Tasars and much of that was because they cannot tack as fast despite having world titles and an Olympic medal.

I’ve raced cats for over 30 years and monos even longer . It’s a pointless exercise racing cats against monos , too disparate in performance , never mind tacking , mark rounding speeds huge difference and in average lap racing cats can complete , double or more mark roundings . Also I tend to start slightly late when I have misfortune to race against monos , I could cause carnage and stuff them all at start , but the futility of monos vs cat racing , makes this aggressive starting over the top .

In Scotland the RYA run a champion of champions sailed in own boats , they adjust pys for wind , penalising cats when windy and only time they can win , your handicappers at least have a more reasonable approach .  But really no point in racing cats against monos .

You should try my cat for tacking I  roll tack ( in fact most do so windward hull is raised on completion of tack for faster acceleration ) , but it tacks on a sixpence , flat bottom ,lots of rocker , no lateral resistance fore or aft of centreboards .

The issue is that, as a proportion of sailing craft, there arguably weren't "plenty" of solo craft faster than the Contender when it was developed.  There was a small number of early As, with very little class racing; Quickcats in parts of Oz; and that was about it.  The 1965 Dinghy Annual treated cats with respect and it looks like there were 40 cats that may have been singlehanded out of 20,000 class racing boats in the UK.  That means they were .0002 or so of the UK smallboat racing scene when the trails that chose the Contender were announced.  That is NOT a very significant number. There were also very few Canoes.

In contrast, today there are probably far more very fast singlehanded cats, foiling windsurfers and foiling kites than there are very fast dinghies.  The A Class is (IIRC) more popular than Moths and Wasps combined, and the foiling boards and foiling kites are more popular again.  

So when the Contender etc came around, there weren't many faster singlehanded sailing craft. These days there are many singlehanded sailing craft that are faster than singlehanded dinghies.  That may mean that things have changed and that if pure speed for person is the aim, dinghies are no longer the obvious avenue.

I roll tack our cat too, and so do the world champs and Olympic medallists I race against in cats. They still tack significantly slower than many dinghies, just as my J/36 and Int Canoe tack slower than my Laser - apart from everything else I'm the club handicapper and therefore have been discussing the issue of tacking speed etc with the guys I handicap and who got 1 and 3 in the last A Class Classic worlds.  The only two races we did with the F18 we finished between them. As you say, it's rather pointless racing cats against monos (or boards) but since our fleet is so small we cannot split them. As the only person who races singlehanded dinghies, doublehanded dinghies, cats and boards in the club I have absolutely zero reasons to be biased against any one type.

The unicorn started same year as the contender , my first contender was no 54 , my first unicorn 1071  even my second contender 372 and second unicorn 1043 ,

Tbh I wish as an irregular poster I hadn’t bothered trying to point out your generalisations and pontification . I’m happy I know what I’m talking about . No wonder there’s only 10 regular contributors to this forum .

Over and OUT on my part I’m back under my rock . 

Jim - am working on a multi-part series about the cats though if travel gets any more difficult I can see this getting stuck 2/3rds finished. You're spot on....the first generation cats were, in the main, pretty dire.  One of my early crewing jobs (before I reached the point where I could pick and chose) was on a Rivercat - a horrible little thing that all but waterboarded the crew. This was the era of the solid bridgedeck and the thinking that a 'dinghy rig will do'. Thankfully it all changed for the better and quite quickly too....as we have seen in other genres, there is nothing like a set of Trials with the prize of International status to spur on development.

With regard to the single handers, if you take a snapshot of the scene in the spring of 1965, before the Trials took place, then another at the end of 1968, when the final decision was taken to adopt the Contender, you can see that a seismic shift had taken place.... in the boats, in the rigs, the fittings and in the way the boats were sailed.

Back to the cats....I've most of the story about what happened between the Australis and the Unicorn but need to go and interview a sailor who was there competing at the Trials.....this is one that I'd love to bottom out as the Australis was such a pretty boat and was damned quick too (quicker than the Unicorns....at first) and a sweet boat to sail....but oh so fragile!

Dougal

Rupert.... a good book but written by people who, whilst they were there, could well be seen as 'part of the story' - in short, they had their own perspective, an important aspect when the  inevitable 'horse trading' went on. Watch this space!

D