- if you are talking “FOOTY” - I fail to see where “Big Bucks” ($$$$) will achieve much in the span of 12 inches of length. Certainly, like the ODOM, one can scrape of excess weight - but in the forms of grams and half-grams… certainly not kilos.
Yes, but we were only talking grams anyway - and as we all know very small gains can be very expensive.
How many out there are so egotistical they would invest $1,000 in order to win a class “pickle dish”? Few would be my guess.
There’s nowt so queer as folk - and where there is one idiot, there are probably two. Did I hear anyone say SUV?
2
) What exactly is the class trying to be? - if pure development, you have too many rules. If one-design, you don’t have enough - or those you have are inadequate. If you are trying to have something for eveyone, then perhaps better to step back and dump the idea for you will not please all.
This is the vital question. From my personal point of view, multihulls - which is where the real room for radical configurations lies - leave me totally and utterly cold. This is probably the result of hardening cerebral arteries, a life of dealing with offshore racing mohulls and an intense dislike of the sponsored ‘big event’ sailing that has largely destroyed the Corinthian sport with which I grew up and so on. This is my personal hang-up but (apart from a considerable sense of technical curiosity) I would not wish, say, the Blue Skys project to succeed.
My vision for what it is worth is that the Footy should be a class in which tinkering developers who are moderately set in their ways can enjoy themselves. The restrictions in the rule leave very wide options available in rig, hull form, etc. within an envelope in which I feel compfortable and at home. Whether this is compatible with youth involvement, for example, I do not know.
- You cannot promote development by having a lot of restrictive rules. Once you get restrictive as with a one-design, then you only encouarge the “tinkerer’s” to begin playing and pushing the envelope, only to find the class is a mini-development class, and you spend more time trying to build a better mousetrap, then learning to tune and sail what you have.
If what you want is a no-holds development class, that is obvious - but such a class is not the only valid approach. In terms of ‘marketability’ might I jusdt point out that the number of more or less open multihulls around is very small. They are an acquired taste, although abely supported by knowledgeable and decicated enthusiasts such as Dick. :zbeer:
- The more you try to control what people build and how they think, the further you get from actual racing. Personally, if an idea merits itself by producing a faster boat, I can consider and/or reject it - just please don’t try to legislate what I am thinking or trying to develop.
Within the box (metaphorically speaking) it is necessary to have some similarities of competing boats. All rules type produce - some more narrowly than others - and this is necessary if people are to get away from the drawing board and enjoy the actual sailing.
Remember the NZ K boat and Dennis’s Mighty Cat? The biggest disaster the America’sCup ver experience, including Lord Dunraven.
- Make rules only that pertain to performance. If you aren’t sure - try it before you ban it. If it’s not performance related, it isn’t worth the time to put it on paper and try to defend it.
Sure. But see below.
- Provide a window of opportunity to allow the developers to demonstrate thier ideas on the water - and let the idea and performance dictate the rule changes. If you really waant to “race” - then why restrict anything to allow one to sail faster? Maybe go the other way and award points to the slowest boat - as that is really what you are encouraging when you add yet another rule.
This is a very thorny one and close to my heart. Let us look at a number of positions.
a) John builds a boat that is radically faster than any other. This is demonstrated on the race course. In one single stroke, it renders the whole fleet obsolete. What do we do? Ban it? If so, we are being very unfair to John, who produced a good idea in good faith? Ban the idea and grandfather the boat? John’s boat is now bound to win any race it enters. No other Footy can ever come better than second.
b) Worse John has made a set of moulds and set up a production line. He has sold 20 boats. Is this a good time to buy stock in John Inc.?
c) John asks in advance for a rule interpretation. His idea seems innocuous
enough (even of no performance benefit)and the Technical Committee rules that it is legal. They fail to notice that, either in the form presented or in some form that they have inadvertantly let out of Pandora’s Box, it has tremendous performance implications. Now go back to (a) - except that John is now saying ‘You told me it was OK.’
Having seen the IOR destroyed by rule managers who saw it as their duty to maintain the value of the exiting fleet, I am very much against putting too much of a brake on innovation. Later IOR boats were seriously nasty, and the entire fleet and its value ae now a thing of the increasdingly distant past. However, the pressure on the rule makers came from owners - the people who go sailing. So far Footy owners are having fun innovationg within moderate limits. What happens next week is anybody’s guess - but unless the class listens to the owners as a group, it will fail totally, utterly and inevitably.
Yes, I know that there are about three different logical viewpoints in there. If I knew how to econcile them, I would be a genius. As it is I am simply a greying yachting appartchik!
Having problems getting the Ideas into a finished model. Too Many other projects (14 Scale Boats in part construction) and love to tinker away. Prefer improving on current designs rather than start from scratch. Always pass credit and any ideas back to the original designer for more R&D.
