First Trapeze

[LASERTOURIST]

I'd really love to , but my Club in Corsica hosts the "masters" (over age 35) European Laser Championships in september 2008 so i'll have my hands quite full.

If somebody wants to join and sail on a "vintage Laser " (my old TOREA, built 1974 N° 17802 ) that is overthere in half retirement after a Busy second career as a sailing school hack....ant that will hopefully be restored, then you are welcome.

Know it dosent qualify for CRVDA, but still and pity all our Plywood caravelles have just been sold to classsic boat enthusiasts...but still a good plan to discover corsica

Nothing about the championship on club's website quite yet , but a look at it will give you the idea of the amount of work involved for the head of that sailing...AND scuba diving Centre...
Well , another year maybe

http://www.cesm.net/

[Chris 249]

Chris,

I wonder if there may not just be a touch of history being written here by the victors. THere was a very strong showing from the Caneton at the trials and on a points basis this is the boat that should have been selected. So - the FD would have had an been the boat for inland and the Caneton for sea use....... quite bizarre really. From the Caneton came the 505, probably the best boat never to get a showing at the olympics.

I've raced both boats and know tat both are wonderful designs. BUT - and this is a huge leap out on the limb of personal opinion, in the end, as an all round boat, the 505 has to be the better of the two.

And now an interesting sub plot - |I see that there is quite a move in Fance to work on 'classic' 505s. Should we invite them to Netley - after all, it's not far from the Channel ports of Poole and portsmouth?

D

Actually, David, I tend to think history in this case is often written by the losers!

I assume you mean there was a strong showing by the Coronet, which was modified to become the Caneton Rapide/505. She did do very well, but the victory wasn't as overwhelming as some 505 sources would have us think.

Similarly, the Osprey has claimed to have dominated the first trials (it was miles back from the FD) and to have introduced the trap (wrong); and the US Thistle claims to have done very well (it did do well in the light stuff but was waaaay back in breezy races).

I may be putting a gloss on it, but the 505/FD split may have worked well. The stable FD was a good boat to introduce high speed sailing to a wide audience, while the 505 was more challenging in many ways and remains a much more forward-looking boat.


LASERTOURIST - thanks very much for the fascinating info. Will it be windy in September '08? I'm training for the '08 Masters worlds at the moment - or will be when the mast step is rebuilt!

[JohnK]

And finally - Elvstroms Trapez! Now there is a subject for an article, which is why I've been researching the boat for some time now.
d

Have you seen the photos of a Trapez at:
http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 513uf4.jpg
http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 512ol6.jpg
http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 530ak6.jpg

JohnK

[davidh]

John,
If you hop over to my website ( http://www.bearfacemedia.co.uk ) you'll find a shot of Elvstrom himself sailing the trapez, in breeze, at the weymouth trials.

So much could be said of the boat, so many nove (at the time) ideas yet.....

Chris - I'm not so sure. The question of the FD v 505 is an old chestnut and one that is now rather hypothetical - after all, the FD did indeed have a long and golden career as the olypmic 2 man boat. Did it realy 'advance sailing' that much? Well, an emotive question and the answer probably depend as much on one's personal viewpoint as on hard fact.

The issue of the Trials was more one of the IYRU ignoring their own criteria - a trait that they have used more than once!! No wonder the whole process came to be seen as questionable, when the very rules set out by the IYRU were so easily overlooked in the servic eof political expedienecy!

D

[LASERTOURIST]

Well,
St Florent is not the windiest of places in september if the conditions are anticyclonic, as is typical , you get a gentle seabreeze waking up at 10 PM , Max force 3
at 14.00 and becalmed at 19.OO..BUT if there is as not infrequently a pass of Mistral (with cold air on N Frace and a low on Genoa) you get a rather wild ride as the Mistral (a Northern wind in Marseilles, takes a W and even SW direction ...and changes name as the corsicans call it Libeccio) ..As it passes over the stretch of hills and mountains between St Florent and Calvi, you get a rather variable and shifty bastard (anything between 10 and 35 Kts in rapid succession and after some time a short vicious chop.

It is often followed by a Easterly return meaning rather regular wind (though boosted by the wind tunnel effect of some valleys) and quite flat water..so it's a wide range of weather conditions , with the thermic breeze prevailing .

CESM website has a meteo page describing these situations with a wonderful 3D graph by our webmaster

http://www.cesm.net/fr-infos-pratiques- ... -page.html
Hope to see you at Laser Euro masters!

[Chris 249]

David, in what trials did the ISAF (IYRU) ignore their own criteria? The sail area at La Baule for the singlehanders was a stuff up, but when else did the IYRU ignore stuff?

About who writes the history. There still seems to be a lot of re-writing around. The 505s have repeatedly said that they walloped the FD, when Westell himself says they didn't. The Etchell says they walloped the Soling, when Knights' contemporary reports says it didn't. That Sail World article on the Unit says the Unit beat the Trapez in the first trials (it didn't); that the Unit won the first trials (it finished third); that the Unit won the second trials (Punch won most races and Thomas himself said the event was inconclusive; I can't find any scores) and I think it implies that the Unit only lost the third trials in the last race. I believe that Contender was ahead, Jeton was second, and Unit a good third.

All these are great boats, but their claims are not borne out by the contemporary records.

[LASERTOURIST]

Well, IMHO, the success of the Coronet/505 and the FD, is not only related to la Baule Trials and IYRU choice for the olympics but also in some other factors such as international diffusion at the start ( FD was anglo germano dutch and 505 anglo french) and the ability to adapt tothe (still to come) GRP molding.

FD had more trouble wit the latter one (The Italian fiberglass Bianchi's were fast but only for a short while and it's Pajot / Lanaverre use of Kevlar
reinforcement -banned for the 76 olympics and reauthorized later- that made the plastic FD's both fast and durable).

A multi chine boat like the osprey could be built in GRP but before the advent of core sandwich it could not be light (think of the Wayfarer and its Quasi equivalent the sturdy but heavy french Ponant).

The trials results were only one aspect .

Furthermore the 505 was butressed (at least in the first years) by the well organized Caneton class and FD had a devoted promoter in Conrad Gulcher...t' not the boats but the men in them...

[davidh]

I think the issue probably all stems what what defines the 'winner'.

In the early use of Evaluation Trials, it seems that the exectation was simply that of a choice of winner afloat. So, at Weymouth, the IC was not even up for consideration, the Trapez outside of the stated design criteria, ergo the Unit, 3rd on points, could be seen as the 'winner'.

By the 2nd set of trials at la Baule the IYRU, in response to the valid criticisums made, clearly state in teh event criteria that the winner on the water may be automatically be chosen. This allowed the application of a number of more subjective considerations - price, availablilty, ease of building, as well as recovery from a capsize (something the Jeton was not good at) and overall boat handling.

The trials in these formative years were also 'blurred' by the fact that everyone sailed one boat - there was none of the swapping about amongst an indepenadant team of 'evaluators' that you see today. Thus the Jeton, as Chris righly points out, was a very strong performer (indeed, it was one of three classes recommended to the IYRU by the Selectors, the others being the Unit and Contender) but some of this was in part due to that fact that the boat was sailed by Uwe Mares, a top flight racing sailor if ever there was one!!

The other point of note is that this was late 1960s - the need for openness and transparency was yet to make itself apparent. So many of the IYRU decisions were thought to have been take behind closed doors that doubts over the 'correct' decision being made were bound to surface.

Isn't this what history is for: to provide us all with an excuse to debate the finer points - with the benefit of 40 years of hindsight!!

D

[alan williams]

I seem to recall that the Hornet also did extremly well in the selection trials and put alot of more expensive and bigger boats behind it. Either Beecher Moore or Jack Holt said that If the Hornet had been more expensive, less easily built and more of a beast to sail it would have been selected.
Cheers al

[DavidC]

The best thing about history is distance and the discussions in between!

The two man centre board trials took a long while. The first round was in 1952 in Loosdrect Lake and on the Ijsselmeer. There were 16 designs from 7 countries. The FD seemed better on the lake and the Osprey had the edge on open water.

Unofficial further trials then took place in Chichester Harbour in September 1952 with the FD, Osprey, Gannet, Int 14, Merlin-Rocket and 12sq M Sharpie.
I have the reports and the FD did not dominate.

The IYRU then set further trials for 1953 in La Baule, by which time the FD's had new lighter hulls and more sail area. I quote from the confidential IYRU report at the time:
"The most consistent winner was Coronet, with two Flying Dutchmen next. Osprey also performed well, and among the smaller boats Fleetwing and one of the Canetons with increased sail area were pre-eminent. The performance of the Hornet was also impressive, considering her small sail area. It was striking that, with such wide differences in the size and design of the boats the racing should have been so close throughout the series"

Fleetwing was a souped up 14 with decks, self draining cockpit, genoa and one trapeze.

Maybe the 505's have some claim. As a point, at the end of the trials the FD had broken 50% of their deck beams and had to be reinforced before production.

As to the IYRU modifying the rules, the Soling may have been a good boat, but Jan LInge himself told me it should not have been at the trials as it was the wrong size and a sailing plug not a production boat. When it was selected, he was not allowed to change anything which is why the boat ended up with measurement templates which would only fit one way round!

Over to you DH

[davidh]

CHri/Dave,

What is really the message of the Trials, along with all the associated politicing, was that dinghy sailing was still finding it's feet and that most of the administrators of the day were actually 'yachtsmen'.

The whole things was so very casual and corinthian. Yuo designed a boat, stuck it on the back of the car, drove to the event and sailed it. If you weren't much of a helm you got a hot shot to do the busines for you - how interesting that both Peter Bateman and Mike McNamara both 'cut their teeth' at IYRU dinghy trials.

Compare thi though to the events of today, when any trial is almost bound to be a head to head between the big names. Afoat there are(upposedely) independant evaluation teams that fill out questionnaires after sailing each and every boat.

Would anybody argue (other than the folk at Topper and Laser) that the 49er was the 'best of the bunch' at Torbol?? Yet, the only reason we have the 49er is because Paul Henderson said 'It's IN - make room for it'.

So - winning afloat is still only half the battle, the Committee Room stuff is still a real minefield, as ha become clear this week with the RYA 'stance' on cats!

D

[DavidC]

I didn't want to mention the cat's!!!

However, I think the RYA has lost the plot on this one, although I have very strong suspicions behind the decision.

If anyone wants to object, there is a petition to be signed at
"Against the RYA's recent subissions to ISAF"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Cata ... bmission?e

It can't do any harm for the RYA to know that there are a lot of people that are very happy sailing cats and do not want to be side lined!
D

[davidh]

Dave

yes, it really is a cse of 'Don't mention the C word' nowadays!!!

Thellatest goings on though well illustrate the point that I was trying to make in reply to Chris 249. decisions made, behind closed doors, by an 'elite' few are always going to be called into question.

Did you see the interview with Shirley Robertson after she'd been dumped out of contention for Qingdao a year ahead of time?

She archly pointed out that the call had been made by people she wouldn't even recognise on the beach...........
Whatever the rights and wrong - th system SHOULD be transparent - ad the same for all.

D

[DavidC]

You are right, I think Shirley's choice of words might have been a little unwise, but you can see her frustration and the man in the street would have no understanding of the systems.

Mind you, be careful you will be asking for honest politicians next!!
D

[alan williams]

Typical Cats getting dirty end of the stick again.

Al Nacra 1879, Shark41