Sydney Hobart One Design.

Discuss. What you you like to see?

 

Tahiti ketch on foils FTW.

 

Great, we will call you Bruce.

NEXT!

 

Don't care but people will still game one design classes. It's human nature.

I suggest that the actual boat you sail gets chosen by lottery on the day before the start of the race, only rule being that you can't draw your own boat.

That would stop the smarties (or at least it'd slow them down) and benefit skills over dollars.

PDW

 

Maybe but some classes are very tight so it can be done.

I wouldn't go to sea on a boat anyone else had prepared.

Well... that is what one design aims to do.

If you want to see skill in ocean racing it is about the only way it will happen. Make sure the gear is the same and safe. It would counter all the points people are moaning about around here.

 

You will never stop people moaning.
Boats and equipment are just too variable, even if it is all intended to be the same.

 

One design classes exist with close racing already. I don't see that as a valid point, the boats can be made near identical.

 

Moggy, I think its a great idea. Today, more than any time in history it's possible to enforce "one design". Did you see the notice that went out to all Melges 20 owners? It threatened severe penalties to anyone modifying anything on that boat. And what about the 66'(?) Clippers-they are one design, I believe.

 

I fully agree with you but people *will* game the system to whatever degree they can get away with. Then you end up with more and more elaborate rules every time someone is caught 'bending' the existing ones and more appeals et al. Look at Doug arguing that a boat that requires an engine running to sail is the same as a boat that doesn't have one.

Getting a boat by random draw means you *can't* game the system by using unobtanium stuff because you have deep pockets. I take the point about wanting your own boat but - have you never crewed on someone else's boat? What's the essential difference? There could be an inspection period before the draw anyway so objections could be made WRT safety standards and boat preparation - that's detail level stuff.

PDW

 

If people are going to game the system to whatever degree they can get away with AND they know that the system will stop them getting their own boat, then there's an obvious loophole - trash your own boat!

Well, "trash" may be the wrong term - but if a win-at-all-costs person had to hand over their own boat to someone in a race, they would make sure that their own boat was as slow and fragile as possible; winches without grease, sails trashed to an inch of their life and held together with bandaids, instruments cactus (or at least wrongly calibrated), the bottom barnacled or at least poorly maintained, etc etc etc. That way at least one competitor would have boat problems!

Much of this would be extremely difficult to control during an inspection, and people have different standards when it comes to the level of equipment and preparation they expect.

I've loaned my current (old and worn) Laser out for a season to two different people, but there's no way I'd lend out my good one design gear to any random person. I take meticulous care of my good racing sails; no way would I want to find that someone has been flogging them all the way to Hobart, scrunching them into a bag across Bass Strait, or over-tensioning the luffs.

 

I'd like to see a small (30-32') offshore one design that could renew interest in offshore racing. IMHO the emphasis should be on accessibility, meaning that it would be economical, simple, and dual-purpose; a big Laser rather than a Moth; more like a smaller Sydney 38 than a Melges 32. It would be one of those boats that unwinds the design spiral; something that backs away from seeking the ultimate in speed and the ultimate in room in order to create a cheaper, tougher boat, whereas a boat like the Sydney 32 was an attempt to pack too much into a set LOA (IMHO).

It would be interesting to have one design sails, like the Laser or the Sigma 33 that was so enormously popular in the UK for years. That way not only could you ensure that the sail wardrobe cost was restricted, but the builder could get a cut of all new sails and therefore they would continue to earn a profit even when the sales of new boats reaches the inevitable point of near saturation. That may stop the builders trying to keep their production line going by introducing new boats that dilute the marketplace.

Ideally, the boat would be built in several countries, so you could just hop on a plane and charter a boat for world titles. Ironically the Beneteau First 31.7, which had good OD fleets in Europe, is possibly the closest we have in terms of numbers and fleets. In design it's a very different type to what I'd prefer to see but it's cheap and although it's not my preferred type it's actually a surprisingly nice boat as far as I'm concerned.

Sure, the boat would not be particularly fast, but designs that are right at the leading edge of OD speed rarely get critical mass in Australia; the Melges 32 seems to be very very quiet. It would also be interesting to see why the Sydney 38 has gone so quiet; it's not a class I have raced for years.

Actually, the Swarbrick S97 is fairly close to the sort of boat that could form a OD fleet around Oz. It certainly fills the role very well in WA but it's never made it over east. Pity.

On a different note; if we're going to build up strong OD fleets we can't keep on replacing them every time someone turns up with something newer and trendier - the strong OD fleets are old boats like Lasers, Dragons, etc. So for the bigger "one design", why not renew emphasis on the Farr 40, but (ironically) not just in the strict one design version but also in the form of class racing for the many modified Farr 40s around the place, racing on IRC? If the two types of Farr 40 got together, but raced separately, it could perhaps create an interesting scene with critical mass.

 

Yes, but it was my choice. I always knew the owner well and was a tad anal about checking the thing over. + I was often integral in preping the boat. That is not random...

 

I'm not suggesting random boat allocation, just tight class rules that are enforced as is done with many other classes. There will be slight differences but we are talking about ocean racing, the differences should be overcome by crew skill in the space of days @ sea. Either way it would be much closer than any handicap system.

 

I'd like to see a cutting edge design or at least current keeping in mind that in a decade it will be 'old'. Not that it matters than much but you have to attract competitive types. I would also like to see it steer clear of any established class dominance or politics... but that is just me.

Ideally it would be easily 'containerable' making storage and transport as easy as it can be. Ideally it you would be able to campaign a global circuit if you had the funding. Sort of an ocean going Etchell that the Euronutz could also embrace.

 

How about the 50^4 class?

LOA max 50m including spars parallel to the CL.

Beam max 50m including spars at 90 deg to the CL.

Combination of air draft & water draft 50m in any proportion chosen.

Total of 50 litres of fuel to be used in any way (including propulsion) that the skipper chooses.

That should be entertaining.....

PDW