UK-Cherub Forum
Off Topic => Banter => Topic started by: douglas_hassell on January 03, 2011, 04:26:01 AM
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Just reading about the World's about to start in Australia.
At least one of the sailors is taking a wing sail and will look to get it measured.
Watch this space :o
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moth-sailing.org/imca/faces/Rules_Docs.jsp#PresNoteOnWings2010
Well at least someone has sense, 30:6 vote to allow wingsails at the worlds, I wanna see how fast moths can really go, is this the next big development, or not going to make that big a difference? Opinions? Will Bora do a horizon job with his wing?
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Much as I admire the Cs, think about building wing rigs and transporting them to Open meetings... Queenie's balsa wood capped wing mast is bad enough on the inconvenience front.
Its also worth noting that if the Moths hadn't banned sailboard rigs back in the 70s the class would almost certainly have turned into a species of sailboard and the foilers would never have come about.
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It will be tough to draw any real conclusions from the results of one regatta - Regardless of whether or not the wing will eventualy prove dominant (should it be allowed after the AGM) we are looking at an almost first gen wing design with sailors who have had a matter of months to learn to use it vs the very highly developed soft rig that the good guys know very well. It looks like Bora will be sticking to his conventional rig, probibly for those reasons.
A lot has been made of the dominance of the wing in the last AC but the reality is that that was a totaly different scenario and I expect there was more to be gained through the reduction in loading and increase in control over a soft rig than there was through purely aerodynamic considerations. Mainsheet loading for example went from around 24 tonnes to around 4 tonnes which is a big deal. Not such a big deal at our scale.
When Ben Hall turned up to the As with his wing a while back he finished within a place of his result from the previous year. He was faster in some conditions and slower in others.
My expectation is that the moth wing will do much as the A wing before it and wont make much of a splash. The difference here might be that should development be allowed to continue there is a far greater base of people who may take the idea and run. Next year could be fun...
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The worlds have started, link is http://www.mothworlds.org/belmont/ at least one boat racing with a wing and some cool photos on the site.
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I may be a bit cynical but I can't help thinking that these wings are better for the CV's of some of the pro sailors, with AC ambitions than they are for the Moth Class.
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Well as suggested the wing didn't make a big splash except when it did and broke. I wonder if the conditions were favouring experience at sailing the boats rather than technology. One boat recorded a speed of 31.1 knots!
I notice that Pete Barton was improving in the silver fleet with a string of 4ths at the end. Given another few weeks I'm sure he would be working his way up the gold fleet.
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I wonder if the conditions were favouring experience at sailing the boats rather than technology.
They always do...
Something that Alex Vallings of C-Tech pointed out to me...
Supposing that you come up with innovation X that is potentially 10% faster than what we have now.
Now lets say that what we have now is developed to 90% of its potential.
And that innovation X in its first iteration is developed to 75% of its potential, which would be pretty good.
OK, so with the current setup you can sail say 90yards of a potential 100 in a given time.
With innovation X you sail 75% of a potential 110yards in that time, which is 82.5 yards.
Therefore innovation X is slow...
Then lets say that Innovation X comes from Joe Mid fleet like me. At the best of times I'll be around 10% behind Jane Champion,
so if I have innovation X I'll sail around 75 yards while Jane Champion is sailing 90, so its obviously really slow...
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I wonder if the conditions were favouring experience at sailing the boats rather than technology.
They always do...
Something that Alex Vallings of C-Tech pointed out to me...
Supposing that you come up with innovation X that is potentially 10% faster than what we have now.
Now lets say that what we have now is developed to 90% of its potential.
And that innovation X in its first iteration is developed to 75% of its potential, which would be pretty good.
OK, so with the current setup you can sail say 90yards of a potential 100 in a given time.
With innovation X you sail 75% of a potential 110yards in that time, which is 82.5 yards.
Therefore innovation X is slow...
Then lets say that Innovation X comes from Joe Mid fleet like me. At the best of times I'll be around 10% behind Jane Champion,
so if I have innovation X I'll sail around 75 yards while Jane Champion is sailing 90, so its obviously really slow...
which is quite a negative way of looking at things when you consider 'innovation X' being Hydrofoils, I cant see any lowriders in the chocolates. Especially from a development sailor. It is the first steps on the ladder for a new innovation that will require a lot more development time than even foils.
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Foils came along in ~1998, but did not win anything until 2004.
(In fact they came along long long before that when Andy P pioneered them)
Foils are an excellent example of what Jim is talking about.
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yep, you are quite right Will, innovations takes along time to get right.
I'm sure Jim's quote represents a very real life view of an innovation in development. And is a great cautionary tail to anyone expecting to leapfrog places by new innovation alone. But it is still, never the less a very negative view of development, one that would suggest the author ( along with other posters on this thread ) would enjoy sailing one design more than development classes.
If you take that view, the cost / benefit reward to an innovation ( reward being measured in success ) far exceeds the pay back, and would logically dictate that the class stagnates. Something that is not within the spirit of moth class.
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one that would suggest the author ( along with other posters on this thread ) would enjoy sailing one design more than development classes.
I think you are stretching something to say that Alex Vallings and I should be sailing one designs.
Its a question of being realistic and thinking through your long term goals. There's rarely any gain without pain, and of course it is no fun if its easy... And if you are going to attempt anything really radical you need to have a shed load of patience and committment. Iteration one may be unlikely to work, but you still need to get through it to reach iteration two. If you give up after iteration one you are unlikley to achieve very much.
For instance I still believe that there's unfinished business with over rotating wing masts, and there's performance to be gained there. However, as a result of work various parties have done with CFD analysis of pole mast performance I now suspect that the performance to be gained is much less than was believed in the days of when people agonised about separation bubbles behind the mast, and I also believe that gust response and dynamic behaviour is far more important than I thought it was (in so far as I knew anything at all) back in the 70s and 80s. I also have to consider my own limited abilities, budget and facilities - and advancing age. So on the one hand it would be very interesting to play with wing masts shaped with something like a self skinning urethane foam leading edge on the Canoe, but on the other hand I don't want to write off two or three of my remaining sailing seasons and a lot of cash I don't have building 4 or 5 development masts in order to go even slower then I do now. And once I've got something that I am convinced is fast I still need to persuade someone with front of fleet talents to take it up, because without that sailing talent a development will never look as good as it really is. Most successful innovations in dinghies come from people who are also front of fleet sailors: look at Cherub history and the great designers the class has thrown up: Spencer, Bethwaite, Murray, Farr, Bowler are I guess the top names. Of those only Spence was not a world class sailor, and not precious few are given the level of vision he had to utterly break the mould and set the entire world sailing scene on a new path. So wingmasts are for someone younger and maybe richer than me I think.
But that doesn't mean I've given up ideas. There are a number of features of the rig I have on IC 257 that are dramatically different from the majority of the fleet. In particular I'm exploring some ideas I have for having significant variations in stiffness below the hounds rather than a simple tube. What I am aiming to achieve is a rig that has the vast majority of gust response characteristics of a two spreader check and caps rig without all the complication and windage of all the extra wires. Maybe its working, maybe its not, but although the potential gains to be made are much less than a wing rig, so are the potential losses, and so my current sailing is less compromised. And If I decide it hasn't worked I can just angle grind the extra carbon off and put the stick back to a parallel tube... Its a lower gain but lower risk experiment, which is what suits me at the moment, but its still more innovatve than anything 99% of the world's sailors are getting up to.
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one that would suggest the author ( along with other posters on this thread ) would enjoy sailing one design more than development classes.
I think you are stretching something to say that Alex Vallings and I should be sailing one designs.
I might be stretching it, but you said it, and i have to draw conclusions from what you post. And written in the way it was, it gave me that impression. I'm glad you still have ideas firing around on your own projects, I would just be happier if people applied a more positive view of development from within development classes. To many times in development classes there are far too many people saying no you can't, when what you need is, let's try it and see.
interestingly you suggest that most innovation comes from world class sailors, and then extol Spencer as a true original thinker, someone able to think out side the box, someone who changed the direction of sailing, whilst not being a world class sailor. Personally I see a strong connection between that fact and his ability to think outside of the then current sailing design dogma. In short I prefer the mantra... "give ideas a chance".
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Inovation comes in many forms.
Jim was pointing out some of the risks of development.
It is a very exciting thought and personally I think if there is someonre out there out there that wants to build the new super x design that will transform sailing good luck to them. We will I would imagine give them all the support they want.
However to incourage people to do that with there eyes closed would be good way of warding of the next generation of Cherubers.
There are many ways of developing. For myself I am about to begin developing skills in sailmaking. Hopefully with other peoples help this will bring another part of the boat trade into the home build relm.
This will make us very close to making a well made, reliable, competative and ofcourse cheep boat anyone could build with help.
For me one of the cool things about Cherubs is being first across the line is only one and often not the most important achievment at any nationals.
Personally I can think of a few acheivments at last years nationals that impressed me as much as the winner last year.
This is not taking anything away from Chris.
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In short I prefer the mantra... "give ideas a chance".
It is strange that you say this as when I read Jim's post about percentages that was what I thaught he was saying. i.e. do not write wings off just from the results of a first regatta, give them a chance to show all their potential.
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In short I prefer the mantra... "give ideas a chance".
It is strange that you say this as when I read Jim's post about percentages that was what I thaught he was saying. i.e. do not write wings off just from the results of a first regatta, give them a chance to show all their potential.
Glad you saw it that way. I didn't. But then I have probably misunderstood your post as well. You were no doubt hopefully that the next AC was going to be sailed in Moths? LOL
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The aims of the individual inovator of which there are a few in the class and the class association will differ.
The inovator doesn't want to be compromised by rules and artificial barriers. These barriers can compromise quite a valid inovation and force it to be cast out giving the rest of the public the wrong message that it doesn't work. (A side issue).
The class association needs to ensure it's future which means being responsible and ensuring that there is a reasonable fleet and it is attractive to new members. This makes some one design classes very popular.
Breaking away with a design of racing boat that doesn't comply with any rules is risky. It is not part of any class so has little appeal or value to the majority of dinghy sailors wishing to race. many new designs have fallen by the way side in history because there was a lack of boats sold to make a viable fleet.
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And there was I thinking this thread was about moth wing sails. ;)
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The inovator doesn't want to be compromised by rules and artificial barriers.
Are you familiar with the concept of creative limitations?
I've come across it from involvement in music: the way I think of it is that if you have an instrument that is limited in some what, be it monophonic, or lacking certain features such as the ability to control volume or pitch or whatever, you may produce more interesting music by exploiting its limited capabilities than with an instrument with almost unlimited capabilities in which the range of choices is quite overwhelming.
In the same way I think rules that limit design in some way can actually encourage more interesting development... I doubt, for instance, if the Moth was an unlimited sail area unlimited length class, they'd have ever got to the foilers, because the jump from 18 foot needles with F off big kites (maybe even A class with big kites) would never have happened... And, for that matter, if the Moth class hadn't banned sailboard rigs would they have every gone down the ultra small ultra light route Andy P set them down,which made the foilers possible (if you doubt that imagine trying to put foils on a Europe). Similarly I strongly suspect that the lack of spinnaker was what forced the C Class wings to develop, because they are constantly hunting power. A soft sail and a soddin' great kite would, even now, almost certainly be faster but to me a lot less interesting.
And that, BTW, is why I've ended up with the IC once they returned to a development rule. Those who were about at the time will remember I have no enthusiasm for big sails and brute power, but once the ICs came up with the light open design hull for the kite free version then that was right up my street. Why should I be interested in stuffing a big kite on: the Cherub does the bouncing across and over waves better than anything else, and I have that T shirt, so what use would a pale imitation be.
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'Something understood' on Radio 4 2 weeks ago was all about the importance of limits in the making of great music and other things. It mentioned a composer who was a PoW and chose to write music for the instruments which were available: A piano with many missing keys, a cello with only 3 strings, etc etc.
Last weeks one is all how bad limits are, as a kind of answer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qn7f
(The first one has gone from iplayer, sadly)
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Regarding moths, restriction has actually encouraged the development of flying foiling. My first effort with foils on the back corners sort of worked, Brett Burvill's boat with foils on the front wing corners sort of worked a lot better, but then the rules required the foils to be 'within the hull waterplane' so development started in a new direction which has turned out to be much faster and controllable.
Without the restriction we would probably still be developing the Hydoptere style foils without the lateral-thinking jump to centreline foils.
The wingsails sort of work at the moment, but if allowed will obviously get intensive development, making them stronger and faster, and more practical ( ie in smaller parts for transport ). OR... they will end up too heavy and not very quick, easy to use or practical, in which case they will wither away.
If banned ( 2 element argument ) then there will be some wide catamaran type mast experiments, and who knows - that might be even faster / better!
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All reasonable points and I will agree with them all.
i was thinking along the lines of IOR which restricted ballasted keels and gave narrow transoms, small rudders making the yachts optimised to this rule less seaworthy.
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Measurement rules (as opposed to box rules like Cherubs (and Canoes) are always a problem. They do need to give a handicap benefit to bad design, otherwise what use are they, so there's always a tendency for designers to look for features that aren't quite as dreadful as the rule thinks they are in order gain a handicap advantage.
In box rules (as I think Dave Roe once pointed out to me when we were looking at an extremely odd N12), designers can be tempted to think that *every* restriction is performance restricting, and so hit the limit on every single measurement point. Apart from being likely to end up with a lumpy unfair boat, Dave pointed out for that to be true the rule framers would have to be completely au fait with every aspect of the influence of the defined measurements on hull shape. That's pretty unlikely since designers clearly can't have such knowledge, otherwise all boats would be the same shape...
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'Something understood' on Radio 4 2 weeks ago was all about the importance of limits in the making of great music and other things. It mentioned a composer who was a PoW and chose to write music for the instruments which were available: A piano with many missing keys, a cello with only 3 strings, etc etc.
Last weeks one is all how bad limits are, as a kind of answer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qn7f
(The first one has gone from iplayer, sadly)
I thought I'd better point out Will, I work with creative limits every day of my life. It is what I do. Limits don't make for something better, but they do make something potentially more unexpected. The two are very different. The real skill for a creative is to able to create truly original ideas from a unrestricted pallet but with to a defined goal.
Getting back to boats, wing sails etc...
That's why it is important to very closely define a goal for a class. A single minded proposition. I.e speed at all costs or fast as possible but with easy handling etc. To my knowledge no restricted development or development classes have ever done this. But often use the nebulas ' in the spirit of the class' rules statement, which in truth means nothing unless defined. What it dose do is allow a select bunch (at any given period of a classes history) to make a judgement on what they believe to be in the spirit. This can allow new developments or restrict developments arbitrarily, depending on the mood / viewpoint of those people.
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What it dose do is allow a select bunch (at any given period of a classes history) to make a judgement on what they believe to be in the spirit. This can allow new developments or restrict developments arbitrarily, depending on the mood / viewpoint of those people.
I think that bunch you describe are an elected bunch.
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There is a stated purpose to the class rules
1 INTRODUCTION
The object of these rules is to provide a set of rules to which inexpensive high performance dinghies may be designed and built.
Which is OK but how do you define inexpensive high performance? Divide the PY by the cost of production and compare with the rest of the market? or some other method. One persons cheap (I can build a wing in my garage rather than pay a sailmaker) is another persons expensive (I can build sails in my front room but need to rent a garage to build and store my wing)
The class development is driven by the class rules, there is a (moderately well) defined process within the class rules for making changes to those rules, you need to be a member then you write a proposal, then get another five members to support you, this gets submitted to the committee who organize a ballot within a given timescale. If enough members support it then the rules change and the framework for of development changes.
This whole system happened recently with a proposal to tidy the rules that went to ballot and was passed. There was also a discussion about introducing a restriction aimed to prevent full foiling, this failed to get enough members to agree on a proposal so it did not go to ballot. Both of these discussions happened in the open and the results were dependent on the wishes of the members.
Regarding the use of a wing mast on a Cherub, my interpretation is that a wing would not be permitted within the rules, there are a series of requirements on the sails which are there with the purpose of defining the sails as flappy things like we currently use.
Where we have an open set of rules there has to be space for interpretation, and if there are enough members who consider that there is sufficient ambiguity in the rules allowing significantly different interpretations then they could write an improvement, get some signatures and trigger a ballot.
We have a situation where members of the class association have the power to control the rules and thus the direction of the class they are members of!
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Changing tack back to the original thread.
Phil alluded to a practical aspect of owning a wing sail. You need somewhere to store it or peg it down so it stays where you left it.
Another practical point worth investigating is what happens when you capsize and take a dive at a wing sail. I assume that the ribs are closer together than the battens so the probability of landing on a rib is higher than with a cloth sail. Would it break the rib or break you? i wouldn't like to be the test dummy.
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There is a stated purpose to the class rules
1 INTRODUCTION
The object of these rules is to provide a set of rules to which inexpensive high performance dinghies may be designed and built.
Which is OK but how do you define inexpensive high performance? Divide the PY by the cost of production and compare with the rest of the market? or some other method. One persons cheap (I can build a wing in my garage rather than pay a sailmaker) is another persons expensive (I can build sails in my front room but need to rent a garage to build and store my wing)
I'm sorry but you are stretching things to say that you can't define expensive because one persons spare time is less valuable to them, than another who is happy to purchase the goods from a supplier. Because he/she values spare time more highly.
You can very easily define the expense of the materials. Carbon is expensive. The methods used to build Cherubs are expensive. You can beg, borrow, steal your materials, get as much help as you like, but you can't call the type of Cheurb that is being built inexpensive. People turn a blind eye to FUNDAMENTALS and focus on areas that suit them. In reality these boats should be made of Ply and Glass, probably 4 plankers as well. If INEXPENSIVE is to be up held. I would also say that is a FUNDAMENTAL Spirit of the rules which has been abused for a hell of a long time.
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If someone out there is happy to gamble £450 I will fit their boat with a wing sail to that complies "fully" with the spirit of the rules, morphs to each tack and can be rolled up like a conventional sail when it is time to put it away. As a bonus the BGM wing would also be a very nice thing to land on (solid ribs are for barbarians and inflatables are too heavy).
The only snag is that looking at the numbers it only looks marginally quicker in Cherub land - even after you have debugged the rig. Kevin has a very well worded argument on this one, I'll ask him if I can post his email.
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1 INTRODUCTION
The object of these rules is to provide a set of rules to which inexpensive high performance dinghies may be designed and built.
Despite the exotic materials used in cherub building proportionally less is needed than many other dinghies.
Compare the cost of a new cherub un modded or customised and you will find that they compare quite well to equivalent high performance boats. The Deamon was marketed at £8K if i remember correctly. And Aardvark advertise a complete boat now at slightly higher prices. Cherubs even compare quite well in price to many low performance boats.
I agree it does depend on what you define inexpensive as. It also depends on what you determine high performance as.
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And there was I thinking this thread was about moth wing sails. ;)
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I'm sorry but you are stretching things to say that you can't define expensive because one persons spare time is less valuable to them, than another who is happy to purchase the goods from a supplier. Because he/she values spare time more highly.
You can very easily define the expense of the materials. Carbon is expensive. The methods used to build Cherubs are expensive. You can beg, borrow, steal your materials, get as much help as you like, but you can't call the type of Cheurb that is being built inexpensive. People turn a blind eye to FUNDAMENTALS and focus on areas that suit them. In reality these boats should be made of Ply and Glass, probably 4 plankers as well. If INEXPENSIVE is to be up held. I would also say that is a FUNDAMENTAL Spirit of the rules which has been abused for a xxx of a long time.
You are absolutely right you can’t define inexpensive by only looking at the value that people place on spare time but it is one of the most difficult to quantify which is why I put it there rather than list every reason I could think of.
I was also referencing a recurring idea in some of the threads that I have read concerning the viability of a moth wing, many posters were saying that a wing was actually cheap as it could be home built using the normal skills of a mothie , ignoring the idea that sails could actually be home built if you have that skill
You could say that a full carbon boat is expensive, compared to a glass ply boat, yet if it stays stiff and sailable (or even competitive) for twice as long, and needs less rework and maintenance is it still more expensive?
The cost of materials is very low when compared to the cost of labour in the production of a boat so if a ply glass boat only lasts a couple of seasons before getting heavy and floppy and leaky, and needs replaced to remain competitive is it worth paying someone to build you another one, or spending another six months in the garage?
How do you want the rules to enforce the inexpensive idea?
I am sure that Andy P has commented that with less rules limiting the construction materials in a 470 rudder he could build them for a lower cost.
Look at the fireball with their ban on carbon end up using Kevlar wrapped spinnaker poles that cost a packet and make a real mess of the foredeck due to their weight.
The cost of many RS sails is elevated because the type of material used is restricted by the rules to a material that is not made as standard by any manufacturer any more.
What do you want a max cost per year backed up by a full audit of receipts for all components used in a boat as part of the measurement process?
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It's the Europe foils that are v expensive ( not 470 )
The Europe foils have a very low minimum weight, no carbon, so I have to use high density foam at the top, medium density lower down, and S-glass, in order to get them stiff and strong enough. S-glass has become expensive - almost as much as carbon ( because carbon is being used more ) and you need to use twice as much, and in a complex layup.
My experience in moths with the changeover from ply/glass to ply/carbon/kevlar to carbon/ foam was that the selling price for the hull was unchanged in spite of the advance in technology/stifness/strength/longevity. The materials were more expensive, but the labour time reduced. The downside for me and the class was that the boats lasted a lot longer, so there were less new boats being built, less trickle down, so less secondhand boats etc etc. In the 70's when boats were just ply and disposable , the guys at the top of the fleet had a new boat every year, and a 5 year old boat was heavy and bendy and slow. The newer carbon boats stayed competitive for at least 5 years, but of course designs moved on a bit.
There are very few ply Forman 4s left, but there are some reasonable early foam sandwich cherubs about still.
Just look at other wood boats eg Merlins - not cheap. Wood/ply is cheap, but labour is not.
However I agree that the Cherub is no longer 'inexpensive' , but even a GP14 is almost £10,000, so it depends what you compare it with. I'm sure that you can easily spend £25,000 on an i14, so Cherubs are very cheap in comparison ;D
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Phil A. I have all the recipets from our build?
I'll vote for that rule change. Could I be the only compliant boat and hence the winner of the nationals?
Andy P. makes the point that I alluded to earlier but backs it up with prices and some good evidence.
expensive/ inexpensive is relative to a control. So the rule could say that a cherub should cost x% less than a Merlin Rocket or an int 14. You could check prices on a year by year basis to show that these is true. it would be harder to bench mark against other classes because they haven't been around for so long.
I'm not sugesting that we do this.
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How do you want the rules to enforce the inexpensive idea?
No... I'm suggesting you should get rid of the rule because it has been abused for many years.
Very quickly... the price of a boat is determined by market forces, The Moth uses much less material than a Cheurb, has only one sail, and one extra T foil yet a MACH2 comes in at... what £12k? Nija @ £10k
I'll comment on the other stuff when I have time...
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I guess the point of Rule 1 is that it needs to be read with the rest of the rules when making decisions.
Back in the day there were other rules which were primarily intended to help reduce costs. These have mostly been dropped in the last few rule changes. Its (now) not for me now to say whether this was a good idea or not. My only Cherub is maintained to the her historical restrictions anyway.
History tells us that materials restrictions rarely work well. The prices and materials on offer change too fast and before you know where you are you have an annual ballot on what grades of carbon are you going to approve this year. And if, for instance, you use 30 square metres of expensive fibre A and the resin to wet it out the total cost might be less than if you use 60 square metres of cheaper fibre B and the increased amount of resin to wet that out. The point about longevity is well made though. When I bought my first Cherub she was about 7 or 8 years old, hopelessly outdated and pretty clapped out: certainly no way to make her competitive. You probably wouldn't say the same of an 8 year old boat today.
A minimum weight rule has a big impact on cost. Weight too high and you are buying a lot of unnecessary materials: weight too low and excessively expensive materials are required. To my mind a minimum correctors rule is helpful, even if it is often abused. Maybe (joke) correctors should be required to be of some extraordinarily expensive material!
The old gear restrictions, specifically the ban on adjustable standing rigging, were another rule that was basically about cost saving. Go and stand beside a Merlin, a 14 or almost any IC other than mine with an Allen price list and total up the cost of all the adjustable rigging gear. Rig size also has an impact on costs. Bigger sails and spars are more expensive than smaller ones and stronger fittings are more expensive than weaker ones. The effect isn't very great though.
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More great points and I'm glad the Cherub class doesn't go for lots of adjustable stuff. Less to think about and well who's got time to think about them anyway. It's also less to land on and with the modern boats a deck covered with string and blocks isn't very good for your footing. A previously made point is that most rope absorbs/ holds water and when wet it weighs more than when dry. A stringy boat will weigh quite a bit more than a simply rigged boat making you slower.
The point about correctors is a reasonable one. Expensive correctors would focus the mind on adding a bit more resin/ fibres in the right place making the boat stronger. Having an expensive correctors rule could lead to dinghy park pilfering and would make weighing at the nationals an even more tense time. I think lead is plenty expensive enough at the moment and having a small margin for future modification extends the competitive life of hulls which are now strong enough to go on for years. The ents have a maximum correctors rule of 4.5kg which in some cases has led to chunky stainless compas brackets being fitted to bring the hull up to weight. Other classes require correctors to be fitted at the transom or away from the optimum position for weight distribution.
As far as I can see the current rules are not resulting in any odd practices and for the time being I think they are about right.
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Once upon a time Cherubs were limited to 10 pounds of correctors which had to be fitted to the back of the foredeck. We threw that rule away in 1987. ;)
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I'm pleased about that, I don't have a foredeck... ;D
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I have read this thread with interest especially the cost/value for money part. I would suggest that if you were to equate grin factor and speed in relation to the cost of the boat, the Cherub would win easily against most competition. My personal experience having sailied quite a range of boats is that the Cherub is a fantastic dinghy to sail. I had two sails at Whitstable during last summer that I hope will last long in my memory. One was with Tom and the other was with WIll, the sun shone and the breeze was around 15 knots, water was flat and the Cherub was off! It is hard to put a price on those experiences but hobbies and fun cost money. In summary my Cherub experience whilst short, was great value for money and bloody good fun.
You may also be interested to know that according to Sailing Anarchy a new Int 14 is about $50000. Yes I have put the correct number of zeros on. Having said that they had 112 boats at their last Worlds in Aus and expect over 100 in Weymouth this year.
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Its a sobering though that during my 10 years in the 14 fleet it became apparent that the more exprensive things became, the more people it attracted to the class, not the more it repelled. Capitalism, hype, kudos, smoke and mirrors at its best.
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There are definitely classes where the ethos is to have an expensive boat... !4s and merlins are well up there. Some years ago Rowsell's marketed a functionally identical but minimimally finished Merlin (White Whale) to ut costs and they could scarcely give them away.
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To be an economist for a moment, this implies these boats are more 'positional goods' (or to be a behavioural ecologist, 'fitness indicators') rather than a tool to do a job. Ask yourself why no-one would pay 50x over the odds for a luxury hammer, but it is the norm to do this for cars.
This has profound implications and may explain why shinyness is so important to sell a boat, despite the poor structural/sailing/ergonomic properties it may have (Topper Xenon, anyone?). I remember being struck dumb by the success of the appalling ISO.
To change discipline again and be a game theorist, it is easy to see how classes shift towards becoming positional goods. It's easy: People who like positional goods are easier to manipulate into paying more for less. Laser Black Magic, anyone?
It also explains why it is that people selling SMODs seem to spend their whole careers telling customers things which anyone who paid attention in GCSE physics knows to be utter bollocks: They aren't interested in selling things to people who know things, because it is so much easier to sell things to people who don't know things, but like the idea of being ahead of the Jones' for a while.
I take this to mean that it is truer than ever that we represent the all-purpose alternative to all that bollocks: And long may that continue.
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(Topper Xenon, anyone?).
I sailed as forward hand in one of those in 30 knot gusts last Sunday to do some coaching. 'Twas an interesting experience!
people selling SMODs seem to spend their whole careers telling customers things which anyone who paid attention in GCSE physics knows to be utter bollocks:
Ah, but Will, engage stats: you know more about that than I. Consider the set percentage of the population who went to GCSE physics lessons. Then the subset of those actually paid attention. Consider likely career choices and lifestyle of that group.
Given then the set of persons engaging in a career in selling SMODs. Consider the size of the intersection of that set with the one above.
Then consider the set of persons likely to be considering purchasing a SMOD. Relate that to the first set.
Calculate the probability of a SMOD salesman and a potential SMOD purchaser to have *both* paid attention in GCSE physics. What sort of order of magnitude of probability do you get?
To be a little more serious I think you're over simplifying when you say paying more for less for positional goods. Intangibles or even semi intangibles like quality of finish, exclusiveness and so on are important to many people, and goodness knows if I had to sail a Laser I'd be desperate for something to distinguish my boat from the others, so why not a Black Magic option if I lacked the time and/or competence to make changes myself? I really think manipulation is too emotionally charged a word in the context.
Its interesting I've also observed that it appears to be possible for a boat to be too cheap to be popular as well as too expensive.
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We met a couple of blokes with a brand new Int14 at the Henri Lloyd Weymouth Regatta last year. They told us it had cost them £25K. It didn't seem very good value for money, especially when they were beaten over the water by a boat 2 feet shorter!
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The interesting thing Neil is that they told you. The prosecution rests.
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Aye.
In London you get a thing called 'the-best-goddam-fun-money-can-buy'. This is when stressed out city types, back from a hard day being very well paid for failing to do the impossible (this is really true), want to spray cash about to help them forget what happened to their dreams of contributing towards a better world (this probably isn't true). What it is seems unimportant. That it is really expensive is the vital part.
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Ah nothing better than philosophy Friday. No better than a psychiatrist to philosophise - wise words Will. But try reading that sentance five time when drunk!
The physics GCSE comments reminded me. I attended an all boys school with an intake of 90 pupils per year. In my year 80 of those took physics A level let alone GCSE. I'm guessing that's quite unusual. :D
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That it is really expensive is the vital part.
This is of course just a high budget version of retail therapy where the spending of money is the main sense of satisfaction... Contrary to popular opinion its not strictly confined to the fair sex... Whilst it would be fair to say that I am not greatly tempted by clothes shops, put me in a second hand bookshop - preferably the now rare type which consists of a bunch of 18th C houses knocked together with short staircases, multiple levels, little corridors leading nowhere and books everywhere, books catalogued, books not, books on shelves, books in piles in corners, books smelling slightly of neglected country houses books... [breaks off to go and have a lie down]. Ahh Thorpes Bookshop in Guildford, long gone now, happy memories. I'd do all my Christmas shopping in there! And I'm not sure I didn't spend a higher perecentage of *my* disposable income in there than the city boys do of theirs...
an intake of 90 pupils per year. In my year 80 of those took physics A level let alone GCSE. I'm guessing that's quite unusual.
I would think so Don't think it was much above 60 out of 90 at my school. Of course some of them got better grades than others of us did.
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I heard an interesting statistic yesterday. 1 in 200 people is a millionaire. People with money always find ways to spend it.
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Or 1 in 100....
http://www.fundraising.co.uk/news/2010/01/04/uk-has-500000-millionaires-say-prospecting-gold
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Humm!
Should we be reconsidering how we market cherubs then.
new strap line:
Big grins, no bollocks!
Could get taken the wrong way by some, but stands out from all the high tech type marketing that everyone else goes for. Following Jim's point that few who sail ever had a grasp of physics and if they did, have now forgotton most of it, it does seem stupid to try and sell it with that emphasis.
However what ever sells stuff to the unknowing is probably the best policy.
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Should we be reconsidering how we market cherubs then.
new strap line:
Big grins, no bollocks!
A while ago I did tried to do some correlation of popularity of asymmetric classes (in terms of champs turnouts) with various attributes of the classes. It turned up just one significant factor: size of Champs fleet seems to be very well matched with the percentage of women sailing in the class, but nothing else (performance, number of strings, weight, you name it) had any kind of relationship at all. So targeting one's marketing to those lacking said appendages would seem to be a very good call.
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Big grins, no boll*cks!
I think the winner of the bumper sticker has just been announced....
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This kind of thing?