Well thanks for the welcome.
As for ISAF? Well I think we'd all call it the intergalactic championship if need be, who cares really. It's more important to have other guys show up and race and have fun, even if it's a pretty far corner of the sport.
So why have we not all heard more in the recent past from the C-class itself. A couple reasons that Steve Clark would be far better positioned to speak on but consider the following.
1.It's a small group in the world to start with that would consider getting together to design, build and then sail some really advanced technology like these boats.
2. It's not cheap by any means to play in this game these days. You can make up for many dollars with a lot of hard work but it costs you time. That and you need to have people on the team who happen to know a lot about things like aerodynamics, composite construction etc. If you don;t have those volunteers you need to pay the pros to do those bits which can add up fast, very fast.
3. Steve Clark and the Cogito team presently sit at the top of the ladder, by many steps over the nearest competition right now. The Aussie YP team was close but has recently been focused on the 50 knot barrier. In fact cogito's domination has been so complete as to be a deterent to some people getting into the game. You have to see their boat up close to understand how awesome it is. Every last imaginable detail has been really sorted out to weigh nothing and be strong and reliable. This is built on a collective experince of something like 80 years of C-class campaigning by his team.
After the cogito team beat the Aussies ten years ago, the wheels fell off the class a bit. There had been a lot of campaigns that came up with a far out idea that did not go too far and that ultimately dulled interest i think, perhaps too much risk of big failure.
So Steve has essentially BEEN the class for the last however many years. He has been working to get people into the class but again, you don't just put up a booth at the local boat show and try to sign people up.
To Steve's credit he has made a great deal of information about cogito available to any team that asks in essence to allow some catch up time for the rest of the world. A voluntary freeze on development as well on his part to encourage more people to get back into the game.
As for who is working on it these days.
Right now:
Canadian team, that's us in Toronto
US Team, Cogito, Bristol RI
Aussie team, Perth Australia
Aussie Yellow Pages team, Australia, inactive at present
British team, Invictus, UK
There could be more out there but we don't know about them right now.
As for cost: Well PL VI I think went for the cost of 3 new Inter 20's maybe?? Don't know for sure. and a new boat... Mutiply by about 5 to 8 times that again depending on what you're doing with the boat etc.
So you may say, OK that's pretty expensive and you're right it is. Especially when you consider we almost always have a tender riding shotgun with us and storage for the wing requires a 50 foot long tent. things like that take it to a whole other level of sailing. It's much more like a "big boat" campaign.
As for the boat, it's awesome to sail. I used to sail Tornados a lot and this boat is on another level. Going upwind all the time at 12 knots and reaching at 12-20 knots in 10 knots of breeze is awesome. The boat feels really smooth and is very quiet as the wing never luffs pops or even moans at all. With assymetric boards not only do you do 12 knots uphill but you climb away from any other boat on the course.
As for us. We have PL VI and we're hoping to have the new boat in the water within the next 12 weeks, but we'll see how it goes.
