David, thank you, that is a good question.
The advantages of development classes, for those whose only interest is in sailing are (1) good boats but not the latest design are affordable; and (2) different designs within a class suit different crews, in areas like weight, ability and temperament. Remember, I am not suggesting abandoning one-designs, just a rebalancing of effort devoted to the different classes.
I am unfamiliar with the classes in the USA but we have the excellent NS14 class in Australia, which embodies these virtues.
I would also humbly point out that at the elite level, older one-design hulls in classes such as Lasers are deemed uncompetitive, there is a current thread on extending their lives, to support this contention.
WD, you and many others have some great thoughts and the Firebug programme is great.
The discussion about development classes in the context of reviving sailing and home building brings up some interesting issues. The NS14 you used as an example is a great boat, but the modern NS is not really a boat that lends itself at all to building at home in ply. Even in the '70s the shape was constrained by plywood construction but that wasn't a problem when most boats were timber, or developed from shapes derived from wooden boats. The current competitive NS14, with its hollows and bumps, would appear to be an impossible boat to build in ply.
The ply boats can also suffer issues with getting comparable rig tension to carbon boats, AFAIK. And some top builders have pointed out that the complexity and costs of top-line gear and rigs mean that a competitive boat is too expensive to warrant an experimental hull shape, therefore most people have moved to just using production moulds even in development classes. The top development-class builders I spoke to in the UK saw this as pretty much an inevitable revenge effect of modern technology in development classes.
Sure, some boats can still be built in ply (and modern tech can allow some very interesting kits) and you can build at home in carbon, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that building in carbon is less enjoyable than building in wood, in most eyes.
BUT.... there ARE still successful home-build classes, with the Sabre probably the real success story in Oz. People who are new to boatbuilding are turning out new ply Sabres in a few weeks at half the cost of a new Laser, or less. The Firebug is also doing well. Both these classes are cheap because of the limitations on rigs and other fittings. The Sabre bans vangs with more than 8:1 advantage, tapered spars, mylar sails, etc. In a way the F18 cats do the same thing as the Sabre, because the rules ensure that comparatively cheap hulls are competitive. The F18 can be an indication that development classes can still work, albeit in a different way to the classic development class concept. The F16, in comparison, is more expensive to build and far less popular despite its other advantages.
So maybe the "problem" with development classes is not the lack of skills, or building space (although these do have a major effect without a doubt), but the rules that permit expensive construction, rigs and fittings and the flow-on effects they have. So maybe if development classes are to grow again, they need a change in their approach to ensure that the design spiral is unwound and the costs are reduced. It's a bit off topic but I was lucky enough to be able to ask Russ Bowler about the enormous success of the Beneteau 40.7. He mentioned that it was a deliberate example of a boat where the design spiral was un-wound. For example, the bulb was kept small because while a bigger bulb would have improved stability, the improved stability would cause higher loads and therefore require more expensive gear. Sadly, the development classes tend to ignore this sort of stuff a lot these days. I was thinking about returning to a development class I love but they just changed the rules and allowed an extra $3000 of gear if you are to be fully competitive at top level .....forget it, I'll spend the money on a nice holiday.
PS - I forgot that the Sabre forum consensus is, sadly, that the ply boats don't last in competitive form as well as the foam ones. I suppose it may be not as much of an issue in a simple boat like the Sabre, where keen home builders can build a new boat every couple of seasons and sell the old one at a good price as it has not been out-designed.
There was an interesting piece on the Sabre forum from champion sailor and boatbuilder Brett Young about the difference between ply and 'glass in Sabres;
n the days that the Plywood boats ruled over the FRP ones (I felt we'd never start winning at one stage), people had more leisure time and could burn an extra 100 or so hrs hollowing and pairing ribs and frames down for weight. Boats were normally in a nice warm and non humid dining room. Wives now banish such important things to the shed or man cave. A decrease in 3 degrees can see you use up to a third more resin for no real benefit. Humidity is a weight and longevity killer. Our moulding room remains at 21-23 degrees and 39% or below in humidity all the time unless we are baking. Our foil and epoxy room remains at 26 degrees......makes a huge difference to amount of resin used and strength of cure. Back in the ol' days you couldn't get economy versions of epoxy as with the 3:1 and 2:1 types now available. These 2 don't even rate close to the 4:1 and 5:1 versions from West and SP for strength and useability. I think about half by memory but certainly a very noticeable difference.
In the past the ply boats were stiffer and lighter than the FRP boats. Plywood by its own structural sandwiching and glue joints is naturally and inherently stiffer than foam......just FRP builders have improved their techniques, while Plywood Sabres have been built with out the spare hours to chase each gram, heavier and lower quality ply, heavier and weaker epoxy resins and less warmth and higher humidity out in the "man cave" .
Brett's viewpoint about the interplay between changes in domestic ideals and the competitiveness of ply boats underlines the complexity of these issues. Sadly, this complexity is ignored by the people who do silly things like promote foiling cats as "the future of sailing." I've got a fast cat and have sailed foilers but geography and economics mean that if foiling cats really were "THE future" then ,my wife and I, and just about everyone else, would have no future in the sport and therefore the sport would have no future.
