RULES - Which are the most important?

[davidh]

Nigel,

be careful what you ask for|! Podcast 2 is now up and running, by the time I get to whitefriars I'll be ready to do a (david) FRost style "Trial by media"

D

[davidh]

Ha!

have got the answer to the Dave C question.

Of course, the man is a measurer!

So - unless you have BOAT rules in place, the sailing can never be fair!!

Doah..... clearly NOT a question for the smod websites

D

[Pat]

I think we should have a pint on who can get the call "vindi vardi boti buggeri aaf" in the background to David's podcast.
I might even wear a Swedish chef's hat for the occasion

A Bollywood turban would be more suitable for the way it sounded when we practiced that call! Sahib. Think Michael Bates in "It ain't half hot Mum" (tears from laughing! )

Any rules about an international language of sailing?

[Nigel]

Hi Pat,

it is the universal language of Esperanto! Just add Micheal Bates, the muppet Swedish Chef or any character from Ello Ello and it transforms into their native tongue. If people do not understand, it must be because they are deaf so just shout louder .

Nigel

[Rupert]

Ha!

have got the answer to the Dave C question.

Of course, the man is a measurer!

So - unless you have BOAT rules in place, the sailing can never be fair!!

Doah..... clearly NOT a question for the smod websites

D

Can't be right - the America's cup has had racing for the last 1000 years or so (yes, I know, I'm a little out!)and at times has had totally different rules for challenger and defender, and yet is still regarded by many as the top of the sport. So the sailing being fair can't be that high a priority, can it?????

[jonathan]

Rupert. always remember that with The America's Cup "Britian rules the waves but America waives the rules!" There has been more legal fees paid out for that damnable and ugly bit of tin than for any other competition barring perhaps that procession known as Formula One.

Some say rules are there for mere guidance and that a potential winner should seek to test and stretch them and wait to be pulled up. Therefore it is incumbant upon us all to learn the rules and protest. Thats all well and good but what of friendly rivalry and sporting behaviour? In this competitive world where professionalism is the rule even at amateur levels this win at all costs attitude is filtering down. Witness the screaming parents on the bank driving their children on and making loud protest to the OOD then giving the poor child a b********g on the shore as he pulls the boat out of the water. When I was a soccer dad I saw parents being "sent off" by referees for interfeering with the run of the game and players having the "hairdrier" treatment at half time again from a parent and not the coach.

I just hope we in CVRDA do not stoop down to this level and we apply the rules fairly and accept that if can't win within the rules then we don't win. Lets face it surely we are in this for the fun of sailing and managing to get our boats round the cans withot sinking too far.

[davidh]

well said jonathan!

Rupert..... you're right but you're also...very wrong.

The rules don't have to say what something is - they can equally say what it isn't. A quick look at any of the development classes will show some very close racing, from boats that are very dissimilar. They do however conform to a 'set' of rules, that are in place and that everyone adhers too.

It is back to that vexed question of transparency. If there is a rule in place then it can be exploited - some would argue then that the competition is a test of who can exploit the rule to the best advantage. But at least everyone starts with trying to exploit the same rule...rather than NOT having a rule in place at all.

Suppose you sail a SMOD - and are very keen to win. There is nothing stopping you from going to all the boats on sale, weighing them, then taking the best option. Ditto the mast. You want a stiff (or flexible) spar. Go and weigh a bundle of bare tubes, then get the one you want.

The difference is - that in one case, the rules are there for all to see (and yes, to exploit if that is the object) but in the other, there is no rule, so how can one know if the rules have been exploited - or not!

D

[Ancient Geek]

Jonathan, since we are wandering a bit you are right in 2000 following a trip to Burnham on Crouch I wrote (under a pseudonim) the following letter to Y&Y which they published.
I was taking a Sunday walk along the sea wall when it came to me! The children who are victims or benefactors of those oft praised training program, are, depending on who you are benefit from the erxercise and the knowledge that at least while afloat their parents are far away. The question is why they do not just keep on sailing to France or Belgium! Instead their cold bedragled forms provide the perfect example of "perfect parenting" fully explained by the immaculately clad (Gill or Musto is de-rigeur.) parents on the bank who explain they are perfect sailors except for never setting foot in a boat but you can learn a lot from watching can't you! The children gain a lot from the experience. At the end of a regatta a tired wet group of children bask in in the glory and feel the pride of their parentd as they (the parents.) enter the club house dry and warm perhaps a litle dehydrated from lack of designer water even tipsy from the hip flask? The mothers discuss how it must be perishing out there or fathers remember how it was colder and wetter in their day and explain if only their young had tacked or gybed at the right moment they would have won. Before you dismis the thesis, remember that is how most of us fought the Gulf War by virtual experience on Television!
It got a few resoinses some witten by me!

[Rupert]

David, I was using the Auld Mug as an example, but normally, I'd have to agree that sailing to a set of class rules, whether to ensure that all the boats have a chance of being equal in a fleet race or are sailing to the correct handicap in mixed racing is important.
The America's cup, on the other hand, has always, or so it seems, gone out of it's way to provide an unlevel playing field. The rule that yachts had to get there on thier own keel, where one had to cross the atlantic, is a fine example, or where one decides a Catamaran will count as sporting, when the opposition had decided, too, that playing by the agreed rules wasn't for them any more, and had built a whale instead of a 12m. The current mess is also a fine example to us in the cvrda of how to run a yacht race.
The further our ethos is from all that, the better. And as our boats are very often unable to conform to class rules anymore, due to there either being no class for rules to exist with, or time and repairs meaning things are no longer quite right (Strange sails are an obvious example), being within the spirit of the association becomes very important.

[davidh]

Rupert,

which is why I said that we're all right and wrong.

Dave C will probably correct me on this BUT - if there is a class that has the most stringent and prescriptive rules, it would be the Metre Boats (and the 12m in particular). THis actually represents a process of evolution where loopsholes were exploited, then closed - a case of trying to improve but often making things worse.

I was talking with AG the other day and the subject of the IOR boats briefly came up. Now here was a rule that could be mind boggling in its complexity. Yet, all it did was bring about a breed of boats that were a pig to sail - and resulted in many of the stability problems encountered in the '79 Fastnet.

For all the weenies on the forum, if you think sailing a 14, Merlin or even a Canoe in breeze a bit 'white knuckle' - then the IOR boats of the mid 1970s, fat, slab sided, huge genoas, weeny mains, nasty distorted and tucked in sterns - that you sailed downwind with a masthead kite AND an equally big 'blooper', this was a boat that gave you an experience that could easily be described as 'life changing' - for the worst!

As these designs got more and more extreme, the IOR rule changed, into IORII, then IORIII (which did nothing but make a whole raft of boats uncompetitive, thus destroying at the stroke of a pen squillions of pounds worth of owners investments). Sadly, rule rewrites do not make a bad rule good - and it wasn't long before IOR - and with it a whole genre of boats, was as dead as the dodo.

IN that respect rules could be seen as a driver of progress, however hard and painful that path may be. BUt - and here is the nub of the whole issue, without that rule in the first place, we could be back to the days of the 'plank on edge' ( a boat over 6oft long, with a 6 ft beam) trying to race against a light, wide, cntreboard rigged skimming dish!

Let's hear it for the rulemakers, yeah!

D

[neil]

A good read on the subject is Peter Johnson's book - Yacht Rating: 170 Years of Speed, Success and Failure Against Competitors, and the Clock

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Yacht-Rating-Su ... 883&sr=8-1

There's a few errors in there, but it's worth looking at, especially the stuff about Gordon Trowers' IOR exploitative designs. Go Gordon

I would offer some defense to IOR racing, having spent a number of years in 1/4 Tonners up to Maxis, the racing was great. And many thanks to to rich owners, though some didn't stay rich for very long after buying a boat.

You do have to put it into context, owners didn't have to invest their money in the boats, they chose to do so and the rating optimiisation was part of the game, albeit a very expensive one

[davidh]

Neil,

absolutely!!

I'm still doing it now....(not bad for a man of my age), no, not that, but racing in Quarter Tonners. I hate to tell you, that compared with racing something like a Melges - or even a J24, the quarter tonners are hard work. In fact, they could well be the big boat equivalent of the cvrda, all the more so as there is now a half ton cup revival.

Lest any of us think we have it hard restoring old dinghies, at the Quarter Ton Cup out in Benodet last year was a boat that had had £60,000 lavished on it in the last year alone - and this still wasn't the 'form' boat.

You're right about the owners and for sure the big boys soon recovered from the knock and went on to bigger and better boats. BUT - there was a significant number of owner/skippers, who had invested in IOR designs, who were then left holding an expensive boat, that had a crap rating, whilst everyone else changed out to CHS.

So - Did the IOR Rule result in 'good' boats?

No! To win, they became ever more extreme and uncontrollable down wind in breeze. The writing for IOR was on the wall when, in the SORC series in the USA, two crew were lost in a single event, with the yacht design being identified as the single biggest contributory factor.

Okay, at the time we all thought the racing, in everything from mini tonners up to the two ton cup boats, was the dogs b's. It was - at the time.

BUT..... in those days, to do the big events, these boats (yes, even the mini tonners) sailed offshore. You had two round the cans races, a short offshore one, then two more round the cans before the double point finale, the long offshore race. I've done this, in a stripped out half tonner at the half ton cup. It was only the sponsorship of Gordons Gin, which gave the opportunity to calm the nerves into insensibility, that made the event bearable.

Never, ever, again!

D

[Nessa]

Some useful rules:

"Don't wear white flannels and a peaked cap when sailing a 14 foot dinghy.
Don't wear white flannels and a peaked cap when sailing an ocean racer.
Don't wear white flannels and a peaked cap."




From: Sailing, by Peter Heaton, pub. 1959

[Ancient Geek]

Nessa,
Well if I may a word for the more formal, whit reflectsthe sun so it is cool, I will plead to nearly always wearing a tie sailing it is so much better than towels at stopping the water going down ones neck, if you hate those smelly dry suits I have oft sailed a in an old reefer,But then I stalk in tweed!!!) As to the yachting cap well if you had as little hair as me and hated those stupid baseball caps and beanies a suitable battered cap with a very tarnished badge adds something. And prevent Sun Damage.

[JimC]

owners didn't have to invest their money in the boats,

I think only a fool invests money in boats. I spend money on boats. Once you have that straight in your mind and realise that its gone for ever life is a lot easier.

Mind you recent events suggest plenty of those who invest money in financial investments are fools, but that's another story...