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RS 300 - HAs it Been Dropped by RS ? |
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Medway Maniac
Really should get out more Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
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Topic: RS 300 - HAs it Been Dropped by RS ? Posted: 29 Mar 14 at 3:48pm |
Good, and to my observation, original thinking, Doug. You should be in the business - but oh, you are!
I think you are right. People enjoy freshening up their boats, so long as it doesn't cost too much (stuff like sails needs replacing regularyl anyway) and doesn't make the old boats completely off the pace overnight. Then again, even new hulls are possible. The Snipes had a huge rejuvenation and number of new boats in the '70's, and the Wayfarer class is going through a similar thing now (if only the new boats didn't invert/weren't so hard to right, so that I could recommend them to novices...)
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jeffers
Really should get out more Joined: 29 Mar 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 3048 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 29 Mar 14 at 3:56pm |
I dont think it is the pulling on of the kicker but the method of construction of it and the fact that it seems to be prone to failure (or causing boom failure maybe). This is only hearsay, I found it easy enough to use when I borrowed a 300 for a jolly a year or so back.
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Paul
---------------------- D-Zero GBR 74 |
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boatshed
Far too distracted from work Joined: 12 Apr 05 Online Status: Offline Posts: 457 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 29 Mar 14 at 5:21pm |
I guess it's pretty easy to 'freshen up' a boat that is heavy with an ali mast and poor sails. It's pretty hard to 'freshen up' a 300, which is a testament to the original design. It has recently had a new sail and a carbon boom. It is already light epoxy hull with a well thought out deck and with a carbon mast. There's nothing wrong with the kicker, in fact I think it works better than many pulley systems.
Make it in pretty colours ? I think if it could be made a bit cheaper it would help but not being a boat builder, I don't know if this is possible. |
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Steve
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JimC
Really should get out more Joined: 17 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6649 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 29 Mar 14 at 5:25pm |
Well its an interesting theory. However we have a wide range of classes from the development classes with fairly frequent incremental and even majotr change (some much more so than others) right through to the most rigid of SMODs. We also have two reasonable indices of popularity available, the Champs turnouts and the number of races in the PY published list. It shouldn't be a very difficult exercise to line up one against the other and see to what extent the numbers support the theory. You'll have to excuse me from doing it though because its time and pas time I did the number crunching for next seasons personal handicaps at my club. |
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Medway Maniac
Really should get out more Joined: 13 May 05 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 2788 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 29 Mar 14 at 5:47pm |
That's right. No avalanche of orders from that then, I guess, or did a mini-avalanche run into the old "we're only building in batches of x" problem? Unless somebody keeps a note of each enquiry and leaps into action if the numbers starts to add up, prospective purchasers would be put off piecemeal. Thus you might have 10 enquiries over a 3-month period, but unless they come along at least five at once they might each get sent away... Some sections of the boating industry are poor at dealing with such situations.
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rb_stretch
Really should get out more Joined: 23 Aug 10 Online Status: Offline Posts: 742 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 30 Mar 14 at 7:15pm |
OK. I asked the question of the RS300 owner who had upgraded and they felt that the hull didn't make a huge difference to the performance (unlike the new rig). Of course the only real way to know is to just swap the hulls and see, but unfortunately that wasn't done.
Anyway conclusion seems to be RS300s seem to keep the hulls stiff for a long time, but no-one knows quite how long.... |
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JimC
Really should get out more Joined: 17 May 04 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6649 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 30 Mar 14 at 11:04pm |
I'm not seeing a big difference in my sums for their personal handicap results, but the methodology I use is extremely poor for spotting front of fleet performance improvements (not what its intended for).
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Chris 249
Really should get out more Joined: 10 May 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2041 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 31 Mar 14 at 5:10am |
1 - With respect to taking lessons from car racing and triathlon, one can ask "why should sailing, a sport that 120,000 Brits do at least once a month, have to learn from sports that 13,400 and 5,100 people do per month?" (Sport England figures).
Maybe car racers and triathletes should be the ones learning from the vastly more popular sport of sailing? As a racing cyclist I don't agree that bicycles can be compared to SMODs as Doug does. For a start, bicycles are effectively a development class not a SMOD. IME people choose SMODS because we do NOT want to change gear or win by having better gear. Secondly, in my experience among racing cyclists (cafe racers and triathletes are often different) it is accepted that, to use the famous line, it's not about the bike. I race world-class Masters who use very cheap bikes because it's accepted that the bike is largely irrelevant. As an example, stuff on the net indicates that a major upgrade from an alloy Cervelo P2K bike to a carbon Cervelo P3 (newer, much costlier, lighter) will save 30 seconds in 40 km (manufacturer's claim) which is about 0.0083%. That margin would not have changed a single place, on average, in my old club's 50km TT. In other words, a typical bike upgrade would normally make zero difference to finishing position. In contrast, the difference between a 100 and a Vareo is some 5% according to PY. In my Laser club that was more than the difference between first and last in some club championship races and it's the average distance between the winner and the guy 75% back. In other words, the sort of boat upgrade Doug is advocating would take someone from back of the pack to winner and vice versa. These figures indicate pretty clearly that the sort of differences between bikes are vastly smaller than the sort of speed differences that Doug is advocating, therefore the looser rules used in cycling cannot be used as an example of the effect that looser rules would have in sailing. Bringing a boat 5% faster into a class simply makes most boats in the class obsolete as winning machines. That's fine if that people bought into a class knowing that was the case but not when they want to race with basically identical kit. I find it bizarre to find anyone saying that the better sailors ALWAYS win no matter how inferior their gear - it's simply not true or else the top Opti sailors would beat the average Tornado sailors. 2 - No, not all SMODders will drool over a newer, faster boat like 10 year olds do over a boy band. SMODders I know buy our boats because we do NOT want a big advantage over our competitors. We simply do not want to win or lose because of the money we spend. I have as much interest in winning by I can buy a faster SMOD as I have in winning a bike or boat race by buying the right to ride a shorter course - zero. Many people are like me. 3 - We already have classes that have periodic upgrades, as others have pointed out. They are called loose ODs or development classes. SMODs without major upgrades currently fill 8 out of the top 10 spots on the list of most popular dinghies on the Y&Y table (leaving out the Contender which had a worlds). The Opti, with very tight OD rules, is the only class more popular. If strict SMODs are such a bad idea then why are they so popular? Unless one has bottomless contempt for one's fellow sailor the logical response is that they must work better for many sailors. SMOD classes that have had major upgrade as suggested fill the following spots on the Y&Y table; 53, 67, 70,127,137...apologies if I have made any mistakes. However, the point seems pretty clear - upgraded SMODs are not enormously successful on the mass market! Saying that upgrading SMODs would good for the sport appears to fly in the face of reality which shows that SMODs that are upgraded are vastly less popular, not more popular. People in the industry may feel that the sport would be better if sailors paid the industry more money. That's logical - many of us feel that life would be better if money was transferred from other people into our own pockets. That doesn't mean that it's an unbiased view. Edited by Chris 249 - 31 Mar 14 at 7:58am |
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Chris 249
Really should get out more Joined: 10 May 04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 2041 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 31 Mar 14 at 6:38am |
So a class that has 12 boats at its national titles is doing it right and a class that gets 200+ is doing it wrong? EDIT - I got the above wrong by looking at the Solution Nationals Attendance number. My mistake. Post left up in the interests of honesty!
Edited by Chris 249 - 31 Mar 14 at 8:12am |
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Ruscoe
Really should get out more Joined: 12 Jan 10 Online Status: Offline Posts: 1514 |
Post Options Quote Reply Posted: 31 Mar 14 at 7:13am |
I have not got time to right an essay like Chris, in short I have a job to get to!
However, I don't disagree with Doug. However his examples are not the greatest. In short, I believe that something needs to change in the sport to encourage growth. From what I remember the sport is static if not in decline? I put part of this down to equipment and so e of our bizarre rule sets, it also allocate a proportion of blame to the clubs and the rya. PY racing is still far from even a compromise, it is unable to react to class developments (until technology filters out in numbers) and many clubs still won't enforce local changes or even do returns. On fact to my mind it's only really Laser sailing that has it right! Whilst the sailing purists will sail a laser because of what it is and what you get out of it, to newbies and others they would rather not sail.
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