There's 'static tippy' and there's high speed instability.

A modern hull like the Por*star could require a lot less athleticism than a Laser to keep it the right way up in difficult conditions.

A modern rig with better gust response requires much less action from the helm or crew.

Within limits, being more athletic is always going to help.

It makes an interesting change to do some racing in less athletic boats, like a Squib or an Etchells or perhaps a 40ft BenJenBav. The racing can be great.

When you want ot design a new class of dinghy, there is IMHO, a trap in looking for maximum performance, it's not the same as giving the best racing. We want boats which are quick and fun and responsive, but we also want tight competitive racing. You don't want a boat finely tuned to the helm's weight or size, if you want broad appeal to lots of quality sailors.

There's a big difference between 'athleticism' and 'expending a lot of calories'.

Big difference between working hard to get the best out of a Laser in real waves on the sea, compared to pumping one around a reservoir.

It’s a slightly strange quote from Steve Clarke as has spent a lot of time in an IC which is a boat with a high performance to fitness ratio, OD rather than DC mind, with people well above 60 and even into their 70s being competitive. Once mastered it is a better old man’s boat than a solo, low in the air dagger board, easy to get back onboard and no flooding, I appreciate it is an outlier. 

Steve Clark doesn't get why the Sunfish isn't popular in the UK.

I think that's all you need to know about  his insight into UK sailing.

Inland, its low rig would be perpetually in the wind shadow of dogs walking on the bank.

On the coast, it would be wet cold and miserable. Except on those odd Summer days when it would be too slow to stem the tide.

Unlike the laser, it was never in the right place at the right time to saturate the market here.

Had it done so then maybe the pull of OD racing might have done it some favours.

But the PY  system would have pushed it to the fringes.

Maybe it's like the Porkstar, the route to success would be to present the market with a fleet of boats as a fait accompli? People race worse things than Sunfish, but mostly because it's the local fleet for their peers.

Responsive is the word you use of a higher performance boat when you are in control

Twitchy is the word you use for the same boat in the same conditions when you are finding it a handful

The amount of pain the boat causes..

Sitting scrunched up by the mast in a laser in light winds was more painful to me than leaning out, and I've got a damaged  back..

Hence single hander non displacement boats are not possible for me. 

The amount of skill between a displacement boat and a dinghy is the same just different.

 I've spent 20 years sailing a Yeoman, (1/2 ton cast iron keel) we can have days when you lean out just the same as in a dinghy, the difference is, if you have a knock down, you right without going in, but you are up to your shins in water and in an hours race, you may as well go home..

Twitchy? try a Yeoman when you finally get it to plane, in a 100 ft wide river, one tiny mistake and you are going to make a big hole in the river bank..

http://www.yeomankinsman.org.uk/yeoman/yeoman.shtm" rel="nofollow - Yeoman Sailing Boat from association of sailing clubs for YK sailors and Yachting enthusiasts (yeomankinsman.org.uk)

Horses for courses…

To me an RS800 is very responsive, on windy days the response might be "Your are not up to it". But I never thought it is "twitchy".

On the the other hand I thought an Albacore to be "twitchy" due to the way the hull rolls/heels but it is hardly "high performance"...

Someone once said the most important factor in dinghy design would be how far your butt is "outside" the waterline (i.e. Canoe = very far, RS Aero = not so far). 

I believe there is some truth in this as it has a high impact on capsizing to windward or not when sailing into a lull or a big header 

Totally agree . This a really good thread, full of well reasoned points of view .

I think the Iso is perhaps a good example of a boat that's OK for static stability, but not so great in hydrodynamic stability (maybe not the correct term?) at any speed?

Also not a brilliant rig.

The kids make the 29er look much easier to sail.

But the Iso is from 30 years ago, it was affordable fast sailing in its day and a lot of people had fun with them. I think maybe some ended up in the long grass because a lot of classes had short lives in that era, people bought one and moved class after 3 to 5 years and there wasn't a queue of people wanting their secondhand boat?

I suspect the main reason ISOs (and Laser 5000s and possibly 4000s) ended up in the long grass was that they were unsuited to the bits of water people actually sailed on, as well as failing to deliver the skiff performance due to their disappointing weight/power ratio ... on top of that, even the most well designed trapeze assymetric boats are no fun in light winds ... which are the conditions most often encountered in heartlands of UK dinghy sailing.

You only have to look at National 12s, Merlin Rockets, I14s and International Moths to bear this out; in these classes twitchy means narrower on the waterline, finer in the ends, which generally results in a faster boat in the more skilled hands ... but you do have to finish to win it!

You only have to look at some modern Merlins sailing on the sea in a decent breeze to see that they are way better at staying in control and making good progress than most 60s designs.

The idea that old slow designs are easier to sail in all conditions is basically wrong. The only 'old' design I'd hold in high regard for being able to get a very average sailor safely around in 'far more wind and chop than we were expecting' is a 505. That may be a tidal estuary thing, they are quite special in short wind over tide chop, riding on the flared bits of hull. 14s, I think most people would say the 'modern' crop are more seaworthy than the roundy-hull era? Moths took the narrow waterline to silly extremes pre-foiling and are too short. N12s are too short. The object lesson in slow 'stable' boats which are shockingly squirrelly at speed is probably the Bosun. A merlin feels like a safe warm place after a blast in one of those things.

Originally posted by JimC Whilst I don't disagree with the premise that the Topper and Laser asymmetric boats were not very good, I think any hypotheses you come up with need to include the fact that Fireballs and 505s, once among the most popular classes in the country numerically, have similarly disappeared into the long grass and really nothing has replaced them. You can add the Laser 2 to the list too - once a very significant class worldwide and now more or less extinct with nothing apparently replacing it.

I don't think that's got much to do with them being easy or hard to sail

More to do with the performance you get for your money.

Both classes have focussed on international competition, and in 505's that doesn't come cheap.

Fireballs lost a generation of sailors to asy classes, which deliver the same speed in less wind.

When you look at club PY fleets and clubs' tendencies to race or not in light/heavy conditions, I don't  see a lot of opportunities where a mid-price Fireball or 505 would be the right answer.

Then there's the issue of the PY being driven down by the sailmakers who race shiny high tech new ones.

Basically it's not the 70s or 80s any more and the days of an open meeting most weekends ithe 'season' have gone for most classes.

As for the Laser 2, you might as well ask why we don't drive Austin Montegos any more. Worldwide numbers were never that impressive anyway, give that a lot were not owned by actual individual sailors. You can buy one for buttons now, but why would you? As a boat they were pretty crap, but they gave affordable level OD racing for their 20 minutes of fame.

The people L2's were targetted at might be sailing RS200s, RS500s, 29ers, other stuff outside Englandshire? How do worldwide 420 sales compare with the L2?

The move to singlehanders at smaller clubs seems unstoppable.

Is this trend the same at other clubs ? 

Some people seem to assume that the trend for more singlehanders is automatically a Bad Thing.

Not convinced myself.

Also people forget that in Ye Olde Days, lots of people sailed Ents, Grads, N12, Firefly Mirror...etc etc singlehanded for pottering and club racing.

well observed, although I suspect the double-handedness of them all has a certain effect.

I guess the closest replacement to the L2 is the RS200... even the most committed of my mates who had them have finally given up when kids reached ages where they have a say in what's going on at the weekend.

Most of the kids don't want to sail too.... I wonder if there is a generational cycle where sailing (or any other pastime) struggles beyond three generations?