Sydney Hobart One Design.

I like it.

 

Out of that whole post you see fit to pick on a throw away line and call it a straw man argument? Oh dear god are we not precious!

Yeah you do it all right, LOOK at you!

What is this a threat? .... and you are suggesting I grow up?

 

Right... so let me get this straight. Its a bad idea unless you use Farr 40's with better rules?

So one one design is better than another?

You can't control costs in a purpose designed boat/rule but you can in Farr 40's?

Yup OK, silly idea obviously! Certainly no really constructive will here.

 

PDW,

starting to roll a little uncool there, it's just a discussion......

Jeff.

 

Could be that PDW doesn't like cats !

 

The point is you stated a goal. Part of that goal was cost containment. It is not very likely that a new design will be less expensive than a suitable existing design. I offered a practical solution to reach *your* stated goal and you find ways to argue.

I never said you could not contain costs in a purpose designed boat. I did say that my experience suggests that a One-Design class that allows freedom to chose any gear not supplied by the manufacturer will become a budget war to a greater extent than a single manufacturer class. Stars and Optimists were offered as examples. You had no reply.

One of the things you seem to ignore is that not everyone wants to sail a One Design. Those that do probably already have a One Design boat. If your real goal is to have a One-Design class in the S-H picking an existing class will increase the chances of success.

The fact that many offshore One-Design classes exist and AFAIK they do not support the S-H should be an indicator to you that there is little (if any) support for the S-H OD idea.

Happy New Year - I'm going sailing with my wife ... on a OD boat ...

 

Nah, I like them just fine. Don't have much use for them, personally, but that's because I'm a packrat type and they respond pretty badly to overloading in a way that cruising monohulls don't. Not an issue in a race boat.

I'd quite like to see multihulls in the Sydney-Hobart personally because they'd almost certainly kill off the engine driven canting keel monohulls once those boats couldn't get line honours.

My big box rule was deliberately left vague enough to cater for multihulls....

IME the more rules there are, the more people set out to game them for personal advantage. See comments about teams spending lots of time on polishing their hull etc. If the object of a one design is to test team skill levels, allowing rule gaming works against that object. Given the price of big boats, maybe it's a pointless aspiration in practice as I do understand the objections to allocating boats to teams by lot. It was one proposal to stop people gaming the system, is all.

PDW

 

My big box rule was deliberately left vague enough to cater for multihulls....Quote.

PDW, I like that.
Perhaps attitudes will start to change after the results of the Broken Bay to Coffs Harbour race sink in.

 

The results of the Coffs race prove that even when you open up an Australian ocean race to multis, you are very unlikely to get a decent fleet of them. Coincidentally the Three Peaks Race, one of the few races where monos and multis race together, has just been put into recess so the number of multis racing offshore this year is probably much smaller than it was last year. The Launceston-Hobart, Melbourne-Hobart, and Melbourne-Devonport have all been opened up to multis for years, but almost no one has bothered to race a multi in those races.

Mono sailors have been completely aware that multis are normally faster for decades. They just don't care, nor (IMHO) should they, since pure speed is largely irrelevant in sport. If speed is what counted then no one would sail A Class cats, Tornadoes, Hobies, PTs, F18s etc since Moths are now faster.

I remember looking from the dock at Twiggy after she paced the fleet to Hobart in 1980. We basically said "amazing boat, didn't it do well", checked it out and then walked away, because its performance was basically completely irrelevant to those of us who were racing monos. It was similar to someone turning up to a bicycle race with a streamlined recumbent, or beating motorcycles with a racing car; the fact that they were faster (for their length) meant nothing because they were playing a different game under different rules. It's the same as the fact that soccer lovers don't give a toss about the fact that rugby league players score more points, or the fact that baseball fans don't care about the fact that cricketers score more runs.

We're loving our new cat. It's beating all the other cats, tris and monos in our city, blasting past much larger sportsboats and the skiffs. Who really cares*! Mono sailors come up to tell us how quick the big cat looks, and then they go back to their monos because they love the way the monos sail - and we also go back to our monos a lot of the time because we love the way they sail, too.

Luckily we don't have the bigoted anti-monohull crowd to deal with where we sail now; they and their ancient disdain are now too old to get afloat. Hopefully one day we'll get rid of prejudice elsewhere too, and people will accept that those who prefer monos do so for very good reasons.

EDIT - just to recap, last time the 'multis in Australian ocean racing' topic came up here, all three posters who had actually done the Hobart said that it should just be accepted that it's a mono-only race, and all those three posters were multi owners!


*OK, it IS fun to be fastest; but it's more of a giggle than something serious. After all, when we had a 16' cat, none of the 16 and 14 sailors ever cared about the fact that the 20' cats normally finished ahead so how can we get excited about beating the smaller boats now we have a big one?

 

Quote:-
Luckily we don't have the bigoted anti-monohull crowd to deal with where we sail now; Quote.

Where are you sailing now Chris.

 

We've moved south. I gave up sailing multis from Pittwater partly because I didn't like the anti-mono hate spouted by some of the multi crowd there, and partly because I found sailing a couple of multis against a bunch of monos was pointless - there weren't enough multis for us to get a good race and yet we stuffed up the overall race. Nor, in the end, did I really enjoy racing offshore multis.

Now we sail at clubs that race everything from cabin monos to windsurfers, and to us it proves that you get better sailing and better club feeling when you have clubs and events that are more specialised; we think it would be better if one of the clubs specialised in multis, for instance, rather than having them spread between the clubs.

Of course multi sailors have known about the fun of specialised events for years, which is why they have specialised events just for multis. The question is surely why some people are so hypocritical that they support events just for multis but criticise events that are just for monos.

I'm keeping score of the pro/anti multi remarks at our new club. So far the score is about even and most of the multi guys are very friendly, but the mono guys are more light-hearted and accepting about cats than the (rare) multi bigots are about monos.

EDIT - Anyway, enough of this digression. To get back to the Sydney-Hobart one design question, surely one tactic would be to find out why the Sydney 38 class no longer gets enough boats to qualify for a one design start in the Hobart. There are surely lessons to be learned there.

 

Fair enough Chris.
I can't understand what you said about friction between multi and mono sailors in your Pittwater club.
The RMYC has a multihull division which races every saturday most of the year and they don't clash with the monos racing.
They do have mixed racing in the races on Monday evenings, but I have never seen any problems and since the multis start last, there are times when the monos do better than the multis, with no bad feelings on either side, because the boats are racing in their own classes.
I only wish that the race committee of the CYCA could bring themselves to allow a multihull division in the Sydney to Hobart race.
Chris, you are quite right in saying that as the CYCA "Own" the Hobart race , they have the right to decide "Monos only" if they want to.
However it is a great shame that they have chosen to be so churlishly selective. One has to question their motives, especially since their big monos are no longer "Pure" sailboats.

 

As a footnote to the above post, I have been following the Pittwater to Coffs Harbour on the on line tracker and have noted that the Mod 60 tri Australia 1 was leading the big 8oft mono "Beau Geste", by 15 NM.
Suddenly, at about midday Australia 1 disappeared from the tracker and Beau Geste was shown in 1st place. Very curious.

 

I can understand the sentiment there, I've had some involvement with multi focused organisation in the past & there can be some big chips adorning the odd shoulder. Really sailing is great pastime & sport at other levels where the environment & comradery play the best parts, the equipment is secondary to the purpose. I'm working towards getting another largish cruising cat but in the meantime really enjoying the value & space of a sound but worn Carter 33.
For the one design aspect, if value is the main driver some marketing & syndicate ownership might work with existing designs, maybe around the 33-35' mark with a versatile racer cruiser/cruiser racer type where more family involvement & cruise to destination events not just the S to H .... just thinking along the Hobie style event to a degree, even a VDS 34 would race gunnel to gunnel & be versatile & fun....I can provide space for builders.... some one else can bring the marketing & tv crew as builders/teams race for completion & competition... furiously fitting out as the start looms on the calender! Not just a race but a tv event, by the week on a sunday night with all the pitfalls & solutions laid bare before the public.. the sweat, the swearing right on the shop floor, real reality in your face rock n roll wrestling style with outrageous colours & graphics up against the white with gold cove line.. it's the only way! with beer comercials making yachting cool... workin' ropes & steel & no rest for anyone... three days at the wheel... how da ya feel!
I'll stop now.
Jeff

 

Shock Horror Australia 1 has been dis-masted.