Is this a sailing dinghy or a sailboard ?

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by xarax, Jun 7, 2009.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    Sorry Bill but I think you're quite in error-thats a very odd way of looking at what has happened. The foiler Moth has simply revolutionized dinghy sailing and the class is growing dramatically as a result. No dinghy under 20' -multihull or mono- is faster and that is a spectacular achievement for an 11' monohull.
    I think the key to what Xarax is looking for may lie somewhere in the Moth direction.....

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    PS I don't think I "slagged" CT-I was there on that forum during that debate-I just told what happened then and what has happened since. CT was wrong-but so were a few other people. No big deal. I was trying to encourage Xarax.......
     
  2. bistros

    bistros Previous Member

    Reread what I wrote. I said "as it was pre-foiling" - scow Moths, skinny Moths - all these designs and existing hulls became obsolete - killing the existing class. This happens in development classes. CT 249 was right - the class as it was is basically history. I also acknowledged the new Moths were exciting.

    If you read his design brief, he wants a very light, very simple, cartoppable two man boat to introduce his son to sailing - hardly a balls-out, "win or swim" one man Moth style boat.

    Cheers,

    --
    Bill
     
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  3. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    There are still non-foiler Moths including scows actively racing-the foiler hardly destroyed anything! Very bizarre......
    The "Moth direction" could include anything from simple,light boats with tomahawk foils to new versions of old Moth scows. There has been so much development in the Moth class that it would be worth looking at the historical development in the class for ideas.
    And the fact that the foiler Moth is difficult for some people in certain respects doesn't mean it has to be difficult. Lots of room for quite high performance in a much easier to sail version.
    I think an easily cartopable micro trimaran could be designed and built that would allow single or doublehanded fun sailing in a very light weight package that was easy to sail and fast.
     

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  4. Hansen Aerosprt
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    Hansen Aerosprt Junior Member

    I guess my comment on page 1 got buried in the developing arguments. Anyone out there have a thought on it? I've been pretty active as a designer in both aspects. Either it was spot on or totally off base. I'm curious...
     
  5. AmbitiousAmatur
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    AmbitiousAmatur Junior Member

  6. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

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    I haven't sailed a formula board-the last board for me was about 1983. But I think it is possible to design a high performance boat that is almost as fast as a Moth foiler and far less strenuous-certainly less strenuous than my board experience. But probably not less expensive...
     
  7. AmbitiousAmatur
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    AmbitiousAmatur Junior Member

    I think some people such as myself are dreamers and want to know if something will work. Granted there are constructions techniques and state of the art materials out there, but some of us just want to be the first to do something or to take pleasure that something that has floated around in our heads which we have painstakingly calculated and worked out every problem of is actually functional. I see from the time of your response that you are not much of a sleeper either and probably can relate to the phenomena of which I am speaking. Time for more rum.
     
    Last edited: Jun 14, 2009
  8. AmbitiousAmatur
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    AmbitiousAmatur Junior Member

    Have you witnessed kitesurfing? Seems like fun. Popular mechanics also did a piece about a ski behind craft with hand controls built into your ski rope handles. Seems like a lot of swimming back to your craft would be involved.

    To the dreamers amongst us.
     
  9. C 249
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    C 249 Junior Member

    Your comment seemed pretty accurate to me, Bill.

    I suppose it is hard to get a baseline to use to judge whether a fast board is harder to sail than a fast dinghy, though.
     
  10. xarax

    xarax Previous Member

    Thank you Hansen Aerospirit,
    A "handheld rig" could also mean a rig that, while is held by one or two hands, is attached on the deck differently than the windsurf mast, i.e. without a universal joint. The Great Jim Drake told that he had tried another version of a mast/board joint where : " the centreboard was rigidly attached to the mast and allowed only longitudinal movement of the sail. That didn't work out too well initially because the water was so shallow. I couldn't actually get on the board and get it out to any position that I wanted to. So I abandoned it, although that arrangement will work, I'm sure. "( bold types by me)
    http://www.windsurfing-academy.com/information_bank/history/interview_with_jim_drake.asp
    I also believe that the one main thing that enabled the successful growth of the windsurf branch out of the sailing boats tree, " the main pleasurable ingredient about windsurfing..." was that on the windsurf board you move around " holding on with your hands and controlling everything with your hands...", (Jim Drake, same citation), and that can be effectively accomplished in many possible ways, independently of the specific kind of mast/board joint, even if your sailing craft has a rudder or not, you hold the boom with your hands or not, and you ride a mono, a cat or a tri hull. The cited patent of this thread is clearly a development backwards from the historical evolutionary point of view, but a development nevertheless. I believe that in art and in technology, in life in general, there are no "ultimate development', and even if "there is no need to revert back", such a step backwards could eventually be a viable one. ANYTHING GOES in evolution, all mutations happen, some, a few of them, live and some, the vast majority of them, die, but the play combinations that thrive for a place under the sun continue indefinitely. The bacteria were an "" ultimate development", the sharks were an "ultimate development", may be even we are too, as the third chimp species, an "ultimate development", but there were, and we hope there will be, more to come !:)
    The windsurf board was also a development backwards, if we judge it from the way one tacks on a classical sailing craft. One can not move his body from port to starboard and vice versa , without moving the mast itself in a more or less complicated way. Contrary with what one would expect if one was watching Jim Drake in those early trial days, this complication was not enough to kill his invention. May be there are more surprises out there waiting for a chance to see the light of the day...
    P.S. Forgive me for the delay in responding to you...I was in the middle of a somehow bitter discussion that, fortunately, was ended from my part. Sometimes some of us are wrong, but some of us recognize it in time...
     
  11. xarax

    xarax Previous Member

    They will NOT be out of the equation, even if we wanted them to be left out...(The same applies to the kite driven hulls.) I only put a somewhat vague border between the so called "extreme sports" and ordinary, common sports. To this day, I tend to think that the foilers and kites are still nearer rhe "extreme sports" area, but this can change any minute with the advent of more user friendly crafts...:) The other remark I want to mention is that a water craft has to float even if the wind dies out, otherwise I think that it is more of a wind vehicle that uses some water appendices. Now, we have first to design a sailing water craft which is a floating device, and then we can attach foilers underneath its hull. I can even think of foilers attached to a swimmer s body...But you have to swim in the first place, dont you ? :)
     
  12. Hansen Aerosprt
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    Hansen Aerosprt Junior Member

    Xarax:
    If the goal is to maintain classical sailing devices and techniques then all segments of the sport today are 'backwards development.' With that said, I don't agree that the criteria for judging the direction of development should be so constrained. Rather, sailing is an efficiency game and the resulting performance (to me) is sufficient to define development success or failure. Evolution is counter-entropic and specialization is the result. As an example, a sportboat is a highly specialized keelboat with higher efficiency and performance. A Formula board is a highly specialized windsurfer without a centerboard or mast track. Kiteboarding could well spell the end of windsurfing in the classical sense and in itself is becoming highly specialized. All of these devices have some crossover or 'hybridization' in their historical roots but tend to divert from them rather quickly as the 'evolve.' In a nutshell, my belief is taking the specialized and merging them into a hybrid is in fact backwards development. I suppose you could contend that every highly evolved sailing craft started as a hybrid but to me it was not a hybrid of highly specialized components - more a hybrid of poorly evolved devices.
     
  13. xarax

    xarax Previous Member

    Hmmm...
    I see your point, but "the opposite of a big truth is a big truth." For example ; We have many sports around the movement of a ball, but why do they survive ? Because the ball itself, the most symmetrical 3d object, is a marvellous thing to X, where X are tenths of verbs describing what a ball can do and what one can do with a ball. That is why we do have many ball sports, and we do not many "ellipsoidal" or "cubical" sports, for example, and not one "tetrahedral" sport... Motion in 3D space is good for the most symmetrical object we can put in motion and follow its course without specialized instruments, or weapons...My point is that, although evolution produced hundreds of different specialized balls and ball games, the reason for the success of them all is essentially the same, one, primordial fact that has to do with the ball and the ball only: Its high 3D symmetry. Evolution will produce many specialized sailing vessels, that is for sure. But we can not help ourselves from not searching the common characteristics of them, from not trying to find unity behind diversity, to find the roots of the tree trunk and not the knobs of its many branches. The effortless motion of the sailing boat on the water that does not require excessive physical work from the sailor or any other means of power except the free wind, ( as the rowing or power boats do, for example ), that is I believe the common characteristic of the sailing boats, the source of satisfaction for sailors on all types of sailing crafts. ( That is why I hate pumping in windsurfing, for example...:) )
    There is also another view of the evolutionary process. Although it produces diversity, complexity and specialization, it does not eliminate unity, simplicity and generalization! Species that have found a survival niche somewhere in the environment can stay there, unchanged, for ages, and can continue to reproduce and grow in numbers, right next to their more specialized descendants. Prokaryotic single-cell animals, for example, i.e. bacteria, continue to live among us, and into us, as we all know...And their number is now greater than it was used to be before the advent of us, their spesialized eukaryotic multi-cell descendants, for the simple reason that they are now feeding on us ! ( many times to our death...) Who is winning in this evolution process, I wonder...
    I hope that specialization will not kill the archetypal simple sailing dinghy that lies in the young mind and heart of us all...
     
  14. Hansen Aerosprt
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    Hansen Aerosprt Junior Member

    Xarax:
    OK, I expected such an answer. I'm prejudiced towards thinking a modern windsurfer is the purest form of sailing (or a kite.) But if you must have a simple sailing dinghy, the El Toro works for me...


     

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  15. C 249
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    C 249 Junior Member

    I checked out the backgrounds of the two head honchos at RS Sailboats, probably the world's second biggest dinghy builder. Both, it turns out, were formerly heavily involved in the windsurfing industry and board racing.

    So that means the world's two biggest dinghy manufacturers are (or were) run by windsurfer sailors, and the world's biggest sailboat manufacturer created a dinghy/board hybrid.

    Surely no one can doubt that the concept has been given ample opportunity.
     
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