Great Landy interview on IACA blog

Martin Vanzulli did an interview with Landy about the recent developments.
Great interview which places the rule discussion in perspective.

See: IACA site

I have talked with many sailors the last few days. Both people who love to fly and others who prefer floating.

I found out that we tend to mix two discussions:
One about rule 8
and
One about the future of the class.

Keeping rule 8 is bad for all people as it does not stop foiling and it makes it harder to get stable and affordable flying configuratons.
Landy showed with his cassettes that rule 8.2 makes no sense and at DNA we found out that it easier to make a heave stable boat without the 1,5m rule.
Even if you do not want to fly you can see that rule 8 has lost his purpose and can be removed from our boxrule.

I cannot close my eyes to the fact that some/many(?) people are worried about a foliling future and that they wish that the class returns to being a floating class. There is a healthy fleet of floating A-class cats and only a tiny minority have the stuff to fly.
Landy is right that there still many sailors who prefer not to trapeze downwind and these poeple have their place in the class as well.
I wish to see one class and not a split between foilers and non-foilers. Maybe we should race together and have seperate prices. Most class events will be dominated by the non-foilers anyway and the class events should faciltate these sailors to the max. The big championships will be dominated by the foilers, but that does not have to be bad. It makes little difference if you are beaten  Glenn on a foiler  or a non-foiler. Most clubracers have accepted the fact that they will not beat the Glenn's and Nathan's of this worlds but are still happy that they can race these guys. They do motivate people to train harder and to get more out of themselves and their boats.

It is my desire that we skip rule 8 as that makes it cheaper to update boats of the guys and girls who want to fly and I wish to see the non-foilers happy and have them visit the regatta's in big numbers.

As a class we can respect the differences within the class and act accordingly. One of the charmes of the class is that we see people from 18 untill over 70. It is not a class of sailing gods and handsome beach boys, but of sailing nerds and sailing enthousiasts. Many of them are already decades in the class and I do find that priceless.