Update
sail area etc. We all know or should know that thin verticals reduce wave drag and are thus faster, so why not put a restriction on the minimum thickness rather than spending fortunes proving something that we already know?
On development-class philosophy MM: Calling it ‘a little bit pointless’ to pursue outright speed in a development class contradicts the very ethos of such classes and – candidly – the author’s own company motto (‘speed is our business’). If one prefers fixed-spec racing, there are many excellent one-design paths. Development classes exist precisely to work at the edge of physics, within rules the class sets. The Moth is one of the most open development classes around and is popular and successful for that very reason. DH: I think that I have covered this one, but while ‘popular and successful’ now, the signs are there that the extraordinary budgets being seen at the top of the fleet are beginning to take a toll on the class as a whole. Is a 30kg 11ft boat that fully loaded costs con- siderably more than a brand new ready-to-race J/70 sustainable? Honestly, I don’t know.
Race management and fairness MM: I agree class-level choices around wind/sea-state windows and equipment limits are the right levers to keep racing fair and affordable. A published wind range with a single-set (or tightly limited) foil policy for championships could reduce quivers and rein in overall costs, as well as increase the viable sailing range. That discussion is ongoing within the class and should continue there. DH:Glad that we agree on this but I understand that the discussion has long since finished and will not be revisited for some time?
Minimum foil size and sailor weights MM: Arguing for minimum foil sizes without discussing the effect on optimum sailor mass is incomplete. Larger minimums tend to reward heavier sailors and narrow competitive body-mass range – another class-level trade that needs explicit debate and evidence. DH: Just my point. That is why starting races when much of the fleet is waterborne is necessary and then foil size will regulate itself.
As fast as an AC75… MM: If a Moth can be made ‘perhaps as fast as an AC75’ this is an extraordinary claim that I would urge the author to back up with designs and data. I’m sure there would be a strong interest in such a craft! DH: Yes, but not with a rule-compliant Moth. I was talking about ways to make an 11ft foiling boat faster just for the hell of it. Read it in context. (Yes, confession! I am definitely interested in absolute speed but not necessarily when designing a racing boat to a tight rule where just faster than the competition is the name of the game.) A 50kt 11ft foiling boat is possible. The maths says so… q
SNAPSHOTS
Not what you wanted to see reaching the South Pole after three months of hard battling across Antarctica; Scott arrives 34 days after Roald Amundsen’s Norwegians. ‘Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here…’
16 SEAHORSE
l First up, obvs, congrats…. to our Super-Coach Rod Davis… l The new OK class’s… Grand Masters World Champion l And to the OK class… itself which, like other good ‘non- Olympic’ one-designs, is absolutely bloody thriving right now l Congrats also… to John Gimson and (wife) Anna Burnet who are now three-time world champions in the Nacra class l The better part of… valour... l Precisely no one… complained when the first leg of the Mini Transat was canned with a hurricane approaching… l Though two flyers… the foiling wünderboat Nicomatic plus one other were already so far in front they nipped cleanly around the violent low… l Blithely… carrying on to the Canaries to await everyone else l Still plenty… of noise around Admiral’s Cup 2027… l New boats… primarily 40-odd footers for AC2… l But… who’d bother trying to beat a sorted TP52 for AC1? l Over rover… aka commonsense rocks… l This winter’s… Caribbean circuit moves from CSA to dual IRC/CSA scoring l A light prologue… to the Globe40 race… l Winners… Lipinski/Carpentier averaging just 8.8kt. But… l Not far into Leg 2… and Belgium Ocean Racing Team set a new Class40 24-hour record of an extraordinary 452.22nm… l Co-skippers… Benoit Hantzberg/Renaud Dehareng then broke their own record hours later adding another 4nm… l Seems like… favourites Lipinski/Carpentier have a fight on their hands… Just 30 minutes between them at the Equator l Slava Ukraini… and yet it was Vladimir Prosikhin’s Russian team Nika that won a 5th RC44 world title in The Hague… l Sanctions… so how does that work exactly – ed? l First they came for… the Etchells… l Then for… ILCA builders Performance SailCraft Australia… l Whose moulds… are now deemed out of class… l Hang on… to that (grandfathered) PS-built Laser l Dylan… the dude… l Helm… Dylan Fletcher is finding his feet in SailGP, lighting an absolute bonfire under the Pommies… l Who suddenly are… in the hunt for a big-bucks final… l The omens are good elsewhere… too... l After last year’s… cracking World Two-Handed title for wee-Scoots Calanach Finlayson/Maggie ‘Fiddler’ Adamson… l Comes an oh-so-close… 2nd place in this year’s event for English (aha!) youngsters Zeb Fellows/Willow Bland... l Fellows-Bland… Bland-Fellows, you need to think about that l The organisation budget… for this year’s Transat Café L’Or (ex-TJV) is nudging 6million euros… l Then add… 1.4million euros for the finish in Martinique… l Previously on Café L’Or… 2017 budget was 2.3m, 2.5m in 2019, 4m in 2021 and 5.5m euros for the last edition in 2023 l One final… fabulous factoid… l The event’s race village… typically generates a surplus of 750,000+ euros l America’s Cup… we reckon it might be three… l Team Kiwi… Luna Rossa… and if they find enough sausage team Pom (fingers crossed)… l The team we’d most love… to see happen… l Lars Grael… has (tentatively) put his weight behind a mixed AC team with disabilities… l For which… the AC75 changes could have been tailored… l Lars… lost a leg in 1998 when his Tornado cat was run down by the off-his-face driver of a powerboat in Brazil… l By then… he’d already won two Olympic medals… l ‘Yes… the accident did disrupt my career as an Olympic sailor in the Tornado class…’ (he says now…) l And yet… Lars went on to win the 2015 Star World Championship with Samuel Gonçalves… l Sincere apologies… to our great friend, photographer Daniel Forster, who captured the iconic bow-on image of Sir Michael Fay’s K-Boat AC Challenger in last month’s edition l After not the easiest of early years… the Ocean Fifty trimarans are seriously getting their sh*t together… l Newcomer… Basile Bourgnon (son of) is already cranking it up with a host of innovations for his new Edenred 5… l And again, obvs… straight out of the traps Bourgnon and Manu Le Roch comfortably won the around Ouessant race on Edenred’s race debut l Even at RaceboatsOnly… there is now a shortage of good Ocean Fifties… l You already know for research it’s…
Eurosailnews.com
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