New low-cost "hardware store" racing class; input on proposed rules

Petros;

1) I removed the post to which you replied within minutes of writing it, as you may have seen before you posted. I did so because after brief thought, I decided it was over the top.

Thank you for spending time considering input - however you did NOT say that you had done so, and therefore there was no way that posters could know that you had done so.

Again, it is great that you have read all the links and (for example) read about Fox etc, but you did not say that you had done so. Nor, for example, is there any way that we could know that you had read Uffa's comments on rulemaking. BTW can I ask what you decided about the need or otherwise for a rise of floor measurement, in the light of Uffa's remarks about the development of Daybreak and the Uffa King?

If you didn't let us know that you had taken our comments on board, and since sometimes it read that you had given them short thrift, then we had no way of knowing that you had considered them deeply.


2) You asked "where have I ignored the experiance of others, please be sepcific because I can not respond to generalities." Let's look at windsurfers, where you also asked "Why should we ban windsurfers?"

Why ban windsurfers? It's because as you said "I do not see how they can meet the goals of the contest". My suggestion to specifically ban them was an attempt to try to ensure that YOUR goals were met.

"Do you think they should be banned?" Yes, because as a highly experienced windsurfer and dinghy sailor I believe that they are likely to win such a contest, but like you I do not think that they can meet the goals of the contest.

"Tell me, why do you think it is necessary to complicate the rules with specific banning of a category of sailing craft?" Because it's the best way to ensure that you end up with the type of craft you want the class to create. Most sailors can't windsurf and it's a bit hard saying that they have to learn how to windsurf to be competitive in this class. Furthermore, even among competitive windsurfers it has been shown that restrictions are needed because the fastest unrestricted craft can be sailed by so few that almost everyone gives up and the class then dies.

"How do you distinguish between a long low hull and a wind surfer? where do you draw the line?"

Simple - look at the existing rules that have successfully distinguished between long low hulls and windsurfers. This is a perfect example of where the experience of other classes can be used.

"Who ever heard of a windsurfer than can carry a 500 lb payload".

Lots of people have. Giant "windsurfers" with bunks have crossed most oceans, after all. And even at the size of "real" windsurfers, there seems to be no real problem making such a beast. Here's something similar, aiming for the Everglades Watertribe event next year;

http://www.adventurewindsurfing.blogspot.com.au/

Some mods would be required to carry the cooler in an efficient way, but there's proof that there's nothing stopping a board from carrying a payload. Even when I was a kid I had a cooler on my board for camping trips.

The Yamaha Waterspyder windsurfer had room for a tent and other camping gear. Similarly, some guys I've been in contact with spent a few weeks cruising remote Pacific islands with a standard board and a custom-built board along standard lines that was equipped with under-deck storage. Furthermore, back in the '80s there was quite a class of tandem boards about 16' long, with 300lb+ crew weights, that went like stink. You can easily sail a "normal" Raceboard or OD type longboard with an extra 150lb, a D2 type handles it much better, my gut feeling is that a 15' "giant D2/Dart" style board would often still be quicker than a conventional racing dinghy when carrying such a load.

So while boards would be slowed with the payload on, a simple and cheap board has such high inherent speed that they could easily still dominate. At a guess, one could easily build something like the old "Darts" used down here for under the price limit. Those boards were faster around the course than a full-blown International Canoe or a 505 a lot of the time, therefore they are extremely likely to dominate a class like this - and as you said, that is not in the ideals of this contest.

So please note that I removed my earlier post because I felt it was too blunt, secondly that we had no way of knowing that you had taken our comments on board (I am not the only one to think that you had ignored them, I believe) and thirdly please note (as perhaps in the windsurfer case) there may be relevant information missing from your considerations.

 

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Petros, see post 301 and the posts that it references. More below:

Sketches- the wire supports the seat when it has a load on it and allows it to pivot. Pivot range could be adjustable; the shock cord keeps the seat level with no load. The seat could be substantially lighter with trapeze wire support.

 

CT 249,

Thank you for elaborating on sailboards, I am now more inclined to agree with you on the subject. Lets explore this further. Many of those in the links are certainly not conventional sailboard, but how do you separate them from sailing dinghys? I have been on lots of small boats, but only a few sailboards and yes to sail well takes a lot more skill. Those on the links look more like slim boat hulls with a sailboard rig, and decks that can be stood on. Many recreational boats, actual boats, use sailboard like sails with rigging, how would one separate the two? how do you keep sailboads out and not limit creativity? I am not arguing, I want to know your ideas on this topic.

Is simply standing and manipulating the sail by hand considered a sailboard? Seems like a reasonable thing to do in some instances, require rudders, fixed masts? all would limit innovation.

 

Doug,

That pivoting seat is a great idea, I would not really consider it a trapeze wire, it just supports the seat, not a trapeze. Now that you post it I do remember it, I think you calling it a trapeze wire is what confused me as to what you were asking. It could be done without the wire as well so this would not violate the no trapeze rule, it is just supporting rigging for the seat.

I think if there was a requirement that all moving parts be designed so injury does not occur when operating the boat that should take care of it. sliding seats are hard to make safe, but pivoting could likely not be a problem. Rule "no finger or other appendage will be able to be inserted or fit in, under or around any moving parts while in or around the normal sailing positions." and of course judges shall make that determination.

 

Petros,

The no finger "rule" could be interpreted to mean no pulleys. You certainly can catch your finger if you get too close to a pulley or even a turning block used to lead a main sheet.

Marc

 

Petros makes good comments in regard to sailboards.

Specifically, I have spent more than a little bit of time pondering how to take a small boat and design a sail / wing with controls that allow optimum on the fly canting and angle of attack control. Combine this with foils to get hull(s) out of the water and there is the potential to achieve speeds for average guys that are currently only available to the young, strong, well conditioned atheletes that compete at the top of the sailboarding/kiting/mothing worlds. Note that all my ideas tend to trade off good handling and as such would not be great around the cans.

Although my concepts do not fit in well with this thread, any attempt to promote a "faster small boat" needs to address things like windsurfer sail technology and moth foil technology. These are very tempting areas for the innovative guys that would be interested in the "hardware store" concept.

 

I dunno, I really cannot imagine many folks who are into that sort of thing being interested in the hardware store concept.

Whilst I can understand the aims behind the hardware store concept, and it has its place, trying to do leading edge design with inappropriate materials is just a recipe for frustration. Historically it seems to be that most developments have been made when the new materials are there to permit them, so to try and mirror those developments without the materials seems doomed to frustration.

The thing you have got with the hardware shop thing is that in some respects many of the materials available there are equivalent to what was leading edge thirty or 40 years ago (not the timber though sadly) which could be a source for inspiration: especially as the sport in general and the top end of the performance envelope in particular was rather more popular then than it is now. Something that offers food for rhought because it might indicate there's a sweet spot round there.

But a hardware store boat that's as fast as a modern Moth or 49er is destined to roll up into a ball of self generated wreckage: such craft were built with the materials available 40 years ago and that's exactly what they did, normally sooner rather than later. On the other hand something that's rule limited such that it will wind up in the same sort of speed area as, I dunno, a Club 420 in US terms, can still present just as much of a design challenge to get a craft that's just a tad faster and more usable than the next guys. In that respect its an interesting exercise to look at the rule book for formula One Motor racing. Here say http://www.formula1.com/inside_f1/rules_and_regulations/technical_regulations/8695/fia.html . These are rules so tightly defined that in sailing terms they are approaching one design, yet there's still plenty of interest and scope for one designber to do better than another.

 

gggGuest,

Your post made me literally laugh out loud. One of the entertaining aspects of some of the contests I have entered, $50 sailboat race, 4-hour-4sheet plywood build, and others, is not only the creativity, but watching as much as half of the entries sink during the race. These kind of contest actually attract more spectators than "real" sailboat races because they are entertaining.

But you hit one of my goals, to push the limit of low cost materials. What can be accomplished with readily available, low cost building materials if a lot of smart and clever craftsman actually compete against each other.

Also consider that the fastest boat ever built was made of wood, still holds the record after 30 years. So I am not convinced that low cost materials, such as wood, could not be still used to make excellent performing boats. the limitations of the materials is part of the creative challenge. It will be interesting to see if some cleaver person comes up with a new way to use low cost materials that no one has considered yet, that could rival the best of the high cost builds. That is one of the fun things about such a contest.

I think the big challenge will be to keep this kind of contest from ultimatly becoming a "one design" as many developmental classes have. There may be no way of preventing it, but perhaps adding additional catagories and new types of races every few years should keep fresh designs and new ideas flowing.

 

Thanks for taking that on board, Petros.

Yep, many of those boards don't look like normal modern boards, because boards have become obsessed with high wind speed and dramatically lost popularity at the same time.

The Moth class wrote a rule to keep out boards, which states "The righting moment of the helmsman weight shall only be transferred to the sail through the hull or sheet or similar, in which case it shall be through blocks attached to the hull."

This (IIRC) came about in the late '70s or early '80s after Jon Bowen started sailing a windsurfer in the class. It was a very early style of design and was only competitive in certain conditions as I recall it, but people did decide that they didn't want the Moth (at that stage a very popular club-level boat in Australia and to a lesser extent the northern hemisphere) to become a type of windsurfer if board speeds kept improving (as they did dramatically shortly afterwards).

Jon was a smart guy; his dad was one of the world's leading WW2 radar developers and early radioastronomers and the family had developed "windsurfer style" fully-battened pocket-luff almost squaretop Moth mains in the '60s. However neither he or anyone else figured out a way to "beat" the anti-board rule in Moths. It seems like a cleverly-built rule that bans boards without banning anything much else.

 

P, a couple of points;

1- I'm not sure whether you are interested in canting rigs because you feel that they are the secret to windsurfer performance, but decades of experience from thousands of racing windsurfers indicates that canting a rig is of little real value in terms of vertical lift, which is what many outside observers got hung up on years ago.

Racing windsurfers often spend a great deal of effort in avoiding significant windward cant, because it's slow. The original Windsurfer canted its rig a lot in strong winds, but that was because of the high drag of early rigs and probably more because of the CLR and CLE relationship.

2- re young athletes on Moths and boards; Robby Gough (3rd in the last Moth worlds) would probably be around 45 by now. AMAC, 5th in the last Moth worlds, would be exploring the mid to upper reaches of his 50s. The very nice guy whose Moth I've foiled is in his 60s IIRC but his issues are not those of fitness but (as he says) technique. At least one competitive Mothie is 60 or more. You could also look at the performances of some of the older wavesailers on windsurfers. It's not about age.

BTW one of the more mature Mothies, who has about 40 years of involvement and performance in some of the most highly developed and open of classes and who lives in a hotspot of development classes, has currently given up on trying to develop "backyard" foils. While he is aiming at a high level of performance and that obviously impacts on what he considers to be satisfactory, it's also an indication of the difficulty of the problem.

 

Excellent rule addition, simple and direct. I like it, and will include it. And it really nails directly the difference between a sailboat and a sailboard. This rule does not limit using canting sails, or any other means of altering the shape or orientation of the sail, but would keep the sailboard out of the class.

A sailboard is something very different in operation, concept and utility than a sailboat and I think it is an excellent observation you point out. I have little interest in them so I have not been aware of where they have been turning up or what kind of problems they create in "open class" contests. I do know the sailing speed record was held by sailboards for almost 30 years until Hydrotere (a real big sailboat!) recently broke it.

 

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If you use that specific wording is used wouldn't that preclude a wire supported seat?

 

If I understand your concept, it would be allowed since you either have to cantilever the mast through the hull, or support the mast with shroud lines attached to the hull. both transfer the righting moment to the hull.

 

"The righting moment of the helmsman weight shall only be transferred to the sail through the hull or sheet or similar, in which case it shall be through blocks attached to the hull."

Wouldn't that also exclude a trapeze?

 

It would not include a trapeze for the same reason, you have to brace the mast through the hull by either cantilevering the mast or with shrouds attached to the hull.

Also think about what CT wrote, this rule keeps sailboards out of the moth class, and clearly the moth class HAS trapezes. So both a wire supported seat, and trapezes could be allowed under this rule. But I was considering specifically banning the trapeze, at least on the mono-hull class.