35th Americas Cup: Foiling Multihulls!

CT - the problem with the AC of old was that the size of the boats made the action look ponderous, so most of the audience (who understood next to nothing about what was going on) just saw them pottering around in ways that didn't excite them at all and they had no desire to know more. Now it looks thrilling and that grabs and holds their interest much more. It throws out any old image people may have in their mind of yachties floating sedately about while sipping gin.

You say that the results of independent analysis of the perceptions of sailing shows us that it may actually be hurting the sport, but I don't find that at all credible. I can't envisage anyone watching some AC coverage and saying,

"Well, **** all that then!"
"What's up, honey?"
"You know how we was a' talkin' about maybe gettin' us-selves a little tub for a few hundred dollars to potter about in with the kids? Well, this stuff's puttin' me right off! Just check the speed of those ****ers!"
"Hmm, them don't look too safe to me! And I bet they cost a fortune!"
"That's not the half of it - it looks like we'd have to buy a friggin' crane just to put the sails on!"
"Maybe we should just get us a dog."
"Yep, I think that would best."

In reality, even with it becoming more of a spectacle, few people have actually seen anything of the AC other than little clips on the news, so the impact of that can only be a drop in the ocean. Those who seek out the TV coverage tend to be into sailing already, and they have a much more robust perception of what sailing's about.

With motorsport, there is no inexpensive hobby equivalent for racing gentle machines at low speeds, so it isn't surprising that there are few participants (outside of computer games). The main aim of motorsport is to sell ordinary cars for non-racing purposes just by making some brands seem sexier than others. With the AC, it isn't even trying to sell anyone a boat: it's about prestige for a country, and for the advertisers.

The Olympics and ISAF's World Cup are about medals for individual winners. I was talking about something very different from that where there are no prizes for individuals, but where it's 100% about the team. The Davis Cup in tennis is all about a team winning rather than individual victories, and the Ryder Cup in golf is the same. This wouldn't be any kind of opposition series to the Olympics, but something new, and it could deliberately avoid any overlap with them in classes while also restricting it to the kinds of dinghies that normal people sail in clubs.

 

David, if the new AC is working so well, where's your proof? You can keep on being flippant, but if the new AC is working well it would have some effect you can show us. Where is it?

Or maybe you could consider that there are people who have been studying the reasons why people participate in sailing and in other sports, and respect them enough to read their stuff instead of just assuming that that this is a really simple issue and that the people who have been working on the question for a living are wrong. Maybe you could read the Yachting Australia Gemba report and its sections on the perception of sailing;

http://www.sailing.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/yac-product-positioning-brand-strategy.pdf

You could also look at the results of the other major survey of the perception of sailing. Here's the New York Times talking about it;

" Of course, selling sailboats today is harder than it was back in the 1960's. After all, there were no personal computers, mountain bikes or sea kayaks then to consume spare time -- and there was more spare time to consume. Another problem is that too many people associate sailing with the America's Cup races and with yacht clubs, which often come across as exclusive and excluding....And it was not just the sport's elitist image that turned off consumers. Market research showed that many people were intimidated by sailboats, viewing them as too expensive, too complicated to operate and too easy to tip over. ''Our criteria were simply to overcome these objections,'' Mr. Johnstone said. ''The entire goal was to redefine and reinvent the sport for the mainstream public. So when the potential customer thinks, 'Should I look at sailing?' they know there's a new user-friendly alternative.''

I've been through this with Peter Johnstone, who commissioned the survey, because I do my research. The problem, the survey revealed, was that non-sailors of the 1990s considered that the existing boats were too tippy, too complex, and too expensive. They did NOT think that even monos were boring - they were scared of them, not bored with them. The YA Gemba report has the same message. How can we NOT take this stuff on board? How can we look at these expensive, extensive and detailed surveys about the perception of the sport and then just ignore them?

The other issue is that the research on sailing ties in very well with the huge amount of research done on the general barriers that stop people getting into sports, like this stuff;

http://http://www.ausport.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/142220/ABS_-_Motivators_and_Constraints_to_particpation_in_Sports_and_Physical_Recreation.pdf

You could also look at Andreff, Marty Hronjes and a lot of other people who have studied the link between sports viewing and sports participation. Why on earth should we ignore all they have learned on this question?


2 - Re motorsport. Your comment provided a perfect example of the issue. There IS fairly gentle and cheap motorsport; motorkhana, autocross, hill climbs, club rallying, yada yada ya. People watch high-speed motorsport so they assume there is "no inexpensive hobby equivalent for racing gentle machines at low speeds" just as you did. Thank you for proving the point so well.


3- I could make up a little mock conversation too, like the bit where someone gets really excited about the AC foilers and is then told that no, they won't be able to sail on one; no, they won't be able to sail anything like that at 99.999999% of clubs; no, their local club almost certainly won't even have a small foiler; nope even if they could find a small foiler at their local club they won't be able to really sail it.

I could write about how people may be turned off sailing if they are told the stuff that they can realistically hope to sail is old fashioned, slow and clunky because there is only one future and that is foilers - just as they were turned off windsurfing in the same way. You can read what people like Svein Rasmussen, the head of the world's biggest windsurfing firm says about that by the way, because windsurfing went down the 'extreme' route too and it hurt it immensely.

But all I'm trying to say is two things - one is that the independent objective research shows that giving the sport an "extreme" image CAN hurt it for logical reasons; and secondly that if people reckon the new AC is helping the sport, why can't they just show us some objective evidence? No one's ever been able to deny the first on objective grounds, and no one's ever provided evidence for the second.

 

Wasn't that the aim of the Admirals Cup? What happened to that?

 

But that's not dinghies. I'm talking about an event using ordiary dinghies of the kind people will realistically be able to buy (usually second hand) to get into the sport. That's what needs to be showcased to get round the problems CT's talking about. The closest the public sees to normal sailing is the Olympics, but what do they get there? Is there anything normal there that they might consider buying other than the Laser? No. Does the public get to see much of the racing? No: the Olympic schedule is so full that the sailing hardly gets any air time, and what there is is typically just disappointing glimpses of people crossing finish lines and the odd chance to watch a medal race in which the leading contenders are racing negatively at the back of the fleet. There isn't anything showcasing sailing properly to the public.

 

35th America's Cup on Foils---Oracle

Flying! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuO9h5q_nBE

 

Team Frances new Turbo 45 set up to test concepts on their AC 50 featuring a new generation of UptiP main foil:
Pix by Eloi Stichelbaut--

 

Foilers!

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There are new foilers coming along all the time that the average person will be able to afford like the Laser Foiler, the Flo 14 by Aeronamics, the Exocet 19, the Waszp, the iFly monofoiler, R Class two person monofoiler, the A Class cat foiler, the Flying Phantom, the NACRA 20 FCS, Quant 23 and ,of course, the Moth.The Quant foiling keelboat scow is the "star" offering at the Stickel sailing school in Switzerland where you can sail her relatively inexpensively. Most of these are available NOW! And at least three of these are designed to be easy to foil by the average person.

Flo 14:

 

Why does it have to work well? It exists because people put money into it and they put money into it because they hope to get it back in some way. They aren't doing it as a charity to boost sales of dinghies. What it does do though is generate crowds to watch sailing, and that isn't harming sailing.

If you ask simplistic questions and then misinterpret the results, you will end up coming to incorrect conclusions. Take for example, "sailing has an
image of being ‘exclusive’, ‘for older people’ and ‘dangerous’" - where does that come from and what exactly do people have in mind when they tick boxes that lead to statements like that being put out. Sailing is dangerous enough that it is normally considered essential to have rescue boats out on the water when people are out in sailing dinghies, even if they're in very safe boats with all the right clothing, so if you just ask someone if sailing is dangerous, how do you know which question they're actually answering and what they mean by it? How do you know whether they're picturing foiling AC boats and thinking about high-speed impacts or they're just thinking about a small boat capsizing and someone perhaps being in the water for a long time, possibly under an inverted hull and trapped by ropes. How do you get from their simple answer (ticking a box with the word "dangerous" next to it) to the idea that foiling AC boats make the public think sailing little dinghies is more dangerous than they would if there were no foiling AC boats? And how much do these people actually know if they say they think sailing is "for older people"? Do they get that from today's AC? I don't think so. You are reading far too much into surveys studying ignorance. As for "exclusive", well of course people are going to say it's exclusive if they're picturing yachts costing a million plus dollars, but would they apply the same label to dinghy sailing if they were asked to comment specifically on that? Well, people might still class it as exclusive even then on the basis that there are costs that go beyond just acquiring a cheap dinghy, taking it far past the costs of jogging or going on cycle rides, but can you untangle that from the data. The experts aren't necessarily asking the right questions and it can result in some incorrect conclusions as people misinterpret the results. Having said that though, I've just found a bit in the Australian survey (p61) where it does distinguish between perceptions of yachts vs. sailing dinghies, and the differences are stark: very positive on the dinghies.

Then there's the newspaper article: "Another problem is that too many people associate sailing with the America's Cup races and with yacht clubs, which often come across as exclusive and excluding....And it was not just the sport's elitist image that turned off consumers."

Is that referring to the AC with foiling cats or is it looking back to the days when it appeared (in the minds of ignorant observers) to fit in more with the image of yachties sipping gin? Do the foiling cats of todays AC still make people think about rich people in yacht clubs or do they see athletes doing dynamic things with cutting-edge technology? The survey shows that people don't think sailing is modern, so have these people been influenced into that opinion by the AC of today? Again, no.

"Market research showed that many people were intimidated by sailboats, viewing them as too expensive, too complicated to operate and too easy to tip over."

Right, so that bit appears to be discussing dinghies, but what's changed now to make people more intimidated? Are they more expensive? Judging by the second hand prices I'm seeing boats go for, no - they're more affordable now than they've ever been. Are they more complicated to operate than in the past? Some may be, but there are plenty of simple boats available. Do they tip over more easily than in the past? On average they likely do, but no one's being forced to sail an RS800. If the problem is public ignorance, the solution is education: show them simple, safe boats and show them that even young children can handle them fine. And that's something you don't see on television: children in sailing dinghies. Where are they? Where's the soap opera with a normal sailing family in it? I've only ever seen one that covered sailing at all, and it went for the big yachts and pink gin stuff. I can think of one though that had an accident on Loch Lomond in which a Mirror capsised in calm conditions and some old guy in it drowned for no logical reason whatsoever. Then there are the boat shows which are covered by TV, but what do they show? 40ft yachts are about as close to dinghies as they get. So who's to blame for all this? Yep - it's those damned foiling cats every time.

And yet you keep pointing at the AC and foiling cats and pinning the blame on them. The old designs of dinghies are still around and you can buy fully sound ones for very little cost, so what's really changed? If you show a family a Mirror dinghy and get their interest in this simple, fun boat that's hard to capsize, and then show them a clip of foiling AC45s, do they immediately decide the Mirror is too dangerous and expensive for them? Where in the surveys is the evidence for this effect? Taking simplistic surveys and then reading incorrect conclusions into them is not going to help solve anything. What the survey does show though is that the cost of sailing is a barrier to people participating in it, and we all know why that is, because even if you get a boat for free there are other costs which make it difficult for most people, but these aren't any worse than they were in the past and the AC has made no impact on it whatsoever.

On the motorsport point, there is no equivalent to sailing: if you're racing anything with a motor, the speeds immediately get you into the lethal range, so they are a long way from being gentle machines, whereas sailing feels fast even if you're only going at the speed of a marathon runner.

Is that meant to illustrate AC foiling cats putting them off sailing though? A real conversation would involve someone telling them that they can get plenty of thrills without the same danger and that they don't need hydrofoils to get to the point where they're scared (if that's what they're after), but it would also go on to point out that there will be more foilers over time and they will become more affordable. And why would you write about people being put off sailing by being told the stuff that they can realistically hope to sail is "old fashioned, slow and clunky because there is only one future and that is foilers"? Conventional boats certainly don't look as exciting, but you only have to sail on a day with a decent wind to find out that a planing Mirror dinghy feels like a Ferrari (or at least, what you'd imagine driving a Ferrari must be like). Instead of attacking the most exciting boats, you should be jumping into conversations to point out that ordinary dingies are exciting too and that they're the place to start even if you hope to end up foiling.

You say that the independent objective research shows that giving the sport an "extreme" image CAN hurt it for logical reasons, but I can't see any evidence that it is actually doing so in this case. You ask for objective evidence that the new AC is helping the sport, but what kind of evidence would you accept, and would it matter if it wasn't helping the sport but was merely neutral? The crowds of people cheering from the shore certainly tell a story about it generating a greater interest in sailing, and when you see close-ups of the crowd you see many families who are likely involved in sailing ordinary dinghies or have ideas about getting involved. Have you got a survey of their opinion?

What I see in the survey that hints at a possible problem though is talk of programs training children in sailing. The more you lock things down into something like school, and the health-and-safety brigade keeps making things tougher in that regard, the duller you make it, and that may account for the growing lack of interest with age as children have bad experiences of sailing due to the lack of actual sailing and the lack of freedom just to get out there to race or potter about freely. As soon as a school touches something, they kill it with bureaucracy and suck all the fun out of it by adding all sorts of crap about social skills with endless boxes of skills to check for and tick that need to be acquired in the most drawn out way possible. I would take a closer look at that rather than blaming foiling cats of all sailing's ills.

 

1- They didn't "ask simplistic questions and get simplistic results" - they carried out seven qualitative research sessions after asking tens of thousands of people about their perception of the sport.

I'm interviewing people in the USA about their surveys, reading articles by professors from the Sorbonne and kayak builders from California, corresponding with boatbuilders and windsurfer vendors in the UK, Australia and USA, interviewing foiler sailors and the three men who created the Laser, reading up on the minutes of 1880s meetings in the US canoe sailing association, and discussing related issues with Australian sports academics. That's hardly simplistic stuff.


2 - "Sailing is dangerous enough that it is normally considered essential to have rescue boats out on the water when people are out in sailing dinghies, so if you just ask someone if sailing is dangerous, how do you know which question they're actually answering and what they mean by it?"

We certainly do NOT consider that about dinghies down here where the questions were asked. Where do they get the perception of danger from? Coverage of the Sydney-Hobart and skiffs perhaps. But it may be irrelevant where the perception came from or how accurate it is - the point is that it exists, and that people say it turns them off. So, given that the perception exists, what's the way to get around it? Is it done by wrapping up the most highly-publicised sailors in helmets and body armour and mini air tanks? Does that send the message of a safe sport?

Yes, it would be great if everyone who saw the current AC boats could be then taken down to a club or shown a TV show where kids are floating around on Mirrors - but how in the world is that going to happen? And there is a lot of evidence that perceptions of safety are becoming a major factor in parents and kids sport - over a quarter of parents where I live discourage their kids from playing sports perceived as dangerous.


3 - What evidence would I accept to show the new AC is helping the sport? What about increased numbers of people sailing, increased numbers in championships, even people moving into cats and foilers in the numbers they moved into other booming areas of sailing in the past. Yes, there is some growth in foiling monos, but it's pretty small (150 boats built per year compared to several times that for RS Aeros alone).


4 - "If you're racing anything with a motor, the speeds immediately get you into the lethal range".

I mentioned motorsport, not specifically racing. Speeds in motorsport events like autotest/motorkhana, where you rarely get out of first gear, don't get you into the lethal range any more than sailing a Mirror on a pond gets you into the lethal range. This still seems to be an example where the media concentration on events where speeds are "in the lethal range" means that people assume that all events in the sport are potentially lethal.


5 - "And yet you keep pointing at the AC and foiling cats and pinning the blame on them." No, I pin the blame on expressions of the simplistic belief that extreme sailing will attract people into the sport, and that there are no possible negative effects. At the moment the main people spruiking that view are the AC guys. In the past it was people like skiffies and windsurfers, and time proved them to be wrong too.


6- "Why would you write about people being put off sailing by being told the stuff that they can realistically hope to sail is "old fashioned, slow and clunky because there is only one future and that is foilers"?"

Because some people do say that the "future is foiling" as if there is only one future. Even the head of the European branch of ISAF said similar things, several years ago when people thought it would become popular in boats.

There has been a clear pattern since the 1880s that shows that if the marquee event of a sailing discipline is in gear that is far beyond the typical sailor, then the discipline will decline. Why should this be ignored?

By the way, I've sailed foilers a little bit, multis for years, sailed in pro televised windsurfer events and in the most-televised sailing event in Aus, own a fast 20' cat, have promoted high performance cats, and did my last offshore racing season on a shorthanded trimaran, so I'm not coming from the angle of a conservative sailor. I'm coming from the angle of someone who has looked at the academic research, carried out a lot of research on sailing history (where you can see parallels with events such as the collapse of canoe sailing in the 1800s) and has the practical experience of working in windsurfing when it went down the same route.

Anyway, we won't convince each other. I answered Wet Feet's question by saying that people may not prefer the current boats because of a line of thought that is based on very thorough research, so I'll sign off (hopefully).

 

On a positive note the recent Southsea AC45 event was very well attended. The course was very close to shore, weather good, and people could see the sailors working hard. I know several who went along and they were impressed, and reckoned about 50% of the crowd were non sailors. Only complaints were about the lack of beer......

This last week my local club had some 60 odd boats out with kids in Oppies and Toppers to adults in Bahias, all on various stages of RYA training courses. 99% of those on the courses enjoyed themselves. This type of event (held 3 times a year) does result in new members, second hand boats are not expensive and people progress if they have the inclination. Having helpful members to guide and tutor 'newbies' is a big factor in retaining these new members.

The newer generation of boats, both FRP and roto moulded has definitely reduced entry cost into the sport. The days of home build are generally behind us, but Holt and others did popularise small boats significantly and remove the perception of elitism in 'yachting'. Actually I rather liked Jack's attitude - how to get on the water, have fun and cheaply. These days most people can't be arsed to build a dinghy, they want more instant gratification. That's why most one design class manufacturers give a turnkey solution at a reasonable price. The world has become more sophisticated and unless bleeding edge, a lot of small boat design is pretty nuanced, perhaps a little too much for a complete amateur to crack.

Personally I find the cutting edge ie big foiling cats etc incredbly interesting from a technical point of view. I'd like to go on one, partly to get a feel for the apparent wind angles, rig loads etc. As for an average Club sailor, it is almost a complete irrelevance, maybe an interesting side show. I do feel I could have a go at a Moth with some competence, and a lot of learning... but achievable. But I've got a bit more knowledge than the average Club sailor and quite a bit of build and repair stuff too.

Best Olympic race so far, for me was Quingdao 2008, last 49'er race, big seas, lots of flips, at least one boat finishing under jib alone. Another unable to get low enough to finish, pity the highlights version missed a lot of that, but excellent live coverage! That had some real excitement!.

All water sports carry some danger, but depending on venue this factor varies. In the UK, there are approx 17 deaths a year from all forms of water sport. Three people were drowned swimming (UK) in separate incidents in the past fortnight for example, but 7-8 people die on UK roads daily.... The 'Safety' boat is a much an advisory/regulatory thing ie RYA, and certainly not obligatory for an individual with their own craft. Fortunately buoyancy aids are not obligatory for individuals either at some clubs - again more a fear of legal liability. I'll probably get shot down for saying I like to not wear one when conditions are suitable, some may not like that but I prefer the option of personal responsibility.

 

Well, we needn't bother arguing about it anyway, so let's do something more constructive. There are three possibilities here: that the AC's foiling cats are putting people off sailing by associating it with danger, or that they're making no difference, or that they're boosting sailing (even if the effect is offset by a reduction driven by other factors). We disagree on which of these possibilities is correct and don't have proof to back our positions, but there is something that could and maybe should be done in each case to improve the situation, either to try to cancel out any negative effects or to capitalise better on the positive ones, and we don't need to know who's right in order to take the right action.

Many of the world's top cyclists are racing in London this weekend, but there are other cycling events going on in association with it, many of them involving children on bikes. The big races make cycling look dangerous with the possibility of serious crashes in sprint finishes, but they counter that in the TV coverage with shots of children on fun runs. No one's talking about the dangerous racing or the display of crash helmets putting people off cycling.

So, how about having a support event run alongside each round of the AC45 series in which more ordinary sailing is showcased under the same banner. Clearly it wouldn't get much TV coverage, but it only needs a few seconds and a handful of soundbites from the people taking part to make it clear to everyone that there is a safe, fun entry route into sailing which is open to ordinary families, and the AC organisation could make it a condition of the TV coverage that it is given a minute's coverage each time. That would counter any impression that the sport is dangerous. It could be restricted to a few small fleets of Oppies, Toppers, Mirrors and RS Fevas (or equivalent local boats depending on what's popular in that country), with the country's best young talent being invited to take part. A clear link would then be established between this and the AC: that this is where the AC sailors learned their trade. Show the ignorant public the way in and don't just leave it to chance.

 

Peoples Foiler

Why not small fleets of potential "peoples foilers" like the Laser Foiler, iFly, Flo 14? , Fly 6 or Quant 23 for "group flight"? Just a small sample of boats the average person could fly.....
The fact is that foiling holds an attraction for a lot of sailors-and onlookers. Maybe showing off these potential "peoples foilers" at AC45 race venues would counter any "elitism" or "danger" promoted by the anti-foiler(s)?

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! (maybe)

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Another reason it's nutty for a foiling America's Cup World Series and the 2017 Americas Cup:

From SA front page:

Don’t hold your breath if you’re looking for foiling…looking at past numbers, it appears the ACWS has seen foiling conditions on less than 40% of all official race days. If someone at the America’s Cup doesn’t sacrifice a virgin to the wind gods before next summer and somehow fix their awful weather karma, a low-riding straight-foiled AC50 might just win the whole shebang in 5 knots of Bermuda High zephyrs. Now THAT would be interesting!

Whoever wrote this apparently has no clue that the boats could foil in 5knots of wind-and should!
Here we have a foiling class trying to draw an audience to see the foiling class foil-BUT not enough wind 60% of the time? What is that cost?

 

Actually many people ARE seriously talking about the display of crash helmets putting people off cycling. The OECD's transport committee, an Australian government investigation this year, academics, many cycling groups, town planners, etc etc etc have raised and studied the possibility. My taxes are currently paying for a study on the issue. It's a classic case where many people DO believe that people are put off by safety gear and the message it sends.

Oh, and yes it would be great to see other sailing events alongside the ACWS, but there's a big difference between top-level cycling (where the pros use the same sort of gear a weekend warrior can ride to work) and AC sailing. Not even the foiling Laser is as user-friendly as a racing bike.

 

I guess one of the problems with foiling is the we lose some of the things we might love about sailing. In a Laser I love roll tacking and bouncing over the waves. Something else would be there but not these relatively easy to start on skills.

As an aside I watched the Laser foiler at a regatta with a couple of hundred old Laser sailors. In the 15 knot breeze all it did was slug around as we talked lies after the race. It was incredibly slow, hard to use and a bit of a joke. Certainly I don't think anyone wanted to buy one after seeing how hard it was.

If you want good, close and active sailing we already have it. Its called Teams racing. Great fun and easy for spectators to understand.