Wednesday 12 February 2014

No rule change & debunking the foiling myths - my personal opinion



The class has decided to keep the rules as they are. I can live with that, but it should be easy to change the view about the cassettes. If you see the cassettes as part of the hull it is clear it should not pass.
It is a workaround which might damage the class as it opens a whole new can of worms.
Extreme constructions are possible then , and nobody is waiting for that to happen .
I prefer some stability too. It is not clear though who has the authority to change the measurement guidelines though or who could take such corrective measure. I do not blame anyone, just think that we might need to update the A-class constitution.

Some people were pushing for a complete open rule and I could live with that too. The cassettes might now be used by some to provoke that desired rule change.

Another thing which should be updated is the racing rules. It is silly to fly to the other side of the World and do two 45 min races per day and only 9 in total. Let's have three races a day for 5/6 days, no lay day and three discards. Three as you can miss one day of racing if you break something.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about foiling.
Foiling is a new technique and it takes some practice to master it. When wildthing was introduced it did take some time before the avarage sailor could practice it. The same with foiling.
With the recent developments it has become easier as with the bigger winglets and the deeper rudders the boats become more pitch stable. The sailtechnique is different as you cannot open your sheet in a gust to release because that will power up the boat instead. You have to bear away, oversheet and keep the weather hull out of the water.

We do not need active foils as the AC72's and C-class show. The J-boards are not completely heave stable, but the top 6 in the third race was flying downwind  full time besides the gybes.

Foiling makes sailing in strong winds easier as there are less nose dives and you can sail almost flat downwind in a big gust without getting in trouble.
It is true that the faster the boats go the bigger the gains and losses if you do it right or wrong, but you could see today that slower boats got in front after they had the windshift right. Sailing with 26 kts in the wrong direction can be pretty expensive. Foiling is not just for the Pro sailors. Foiling is fun and now accessible for all of us.

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