What ....and risk our class being ruined?

[/quote]

What ....and risk our class being ruined? [/quote]


Your class has no class now. I guess you did not here what Reggie was wearing a couple weeks ago. I hope the A class can straighten him out.

Fantastic read over at the Daily Sail.

Thanks John.

Yeah...I know Dave. I would love to do the A-Cat thing (without Spandex) but I am so hard on boats, I'm sure I would destroy one in short order, or worse, someone elses.

I guess I will just have to battle Rick for the Olympic berth.

The more I think about this, the more the keelboat thing concerns me. I'm not worried that they'll be stupid enough to kill cats, but something has to go. There's just no way in the world that they'll be able to sell the IOC on building facilities for women's keelboats and not have a men's keelboat. And, as I mentioned before, and as was just verified, the keelboat guys (ISAF) will use the Paralympics as a tactic all the way to the bank.

What amazes me is that no one seems to be calling BS on the Finns. If you're too heavy to sail a Laser, nothing is stopping you from sailing any of the crewed boats, so there is no great "conspiracy" to keep heavy people out of sailing. What am I missing here (other than the obvious hidden agendas)???

Mike

I think you'll find that the Stars view the Finns as the soft target. I would not want to be in that knife fight.

Agreed and the way they may go about is via the "why 2 S/h mono's and no mens leadmine; They MIGHT just push the 5/5 approach....

Or are we all being double-talked and that the current state of play is designed to be replaced at the next meeting to 5/5 !

Stars firmly want the 5/5. In that we have an ally. It is the 470s and Finns that are opposed, for understandable reasons.

In reply to guys like Henderson; I'm in full support for the following line-up of 10 Olympic events


Mens and Womens doublehander - F18's and F16's
Mens and Womens singlehander - A-class
Mens and Womens singlehander Heavy skippers - F16's
Mens and womens Match racing - Extreme 40's (use the same facilities as the paralimpics)
Mens and Womens (figleaf) monohull - laser dinghy. (But could be replaced in backroom deals by kite-surfers or foiling moth)

I guess we fully see eye-to-eye in that respect.

With kind regards,

Wouter

I was on SA yesterday and it seems a number of Laser sailors are not happy with that boat. There is some criticism of it being antiquated.

best response so far ;-)

I love how no one has ever thought, or at least spoken allowed, about putting in Kite surfing and windsurfing freestyle competition.

Skiing and Snowboarding have done it (snowboard cross, half pipe, skicross), I think it is time sailing gets with it and puts similar stuff in (kites could have big air, speed runs, or different style of racing, boards could have slalom like races, trick stuff, whatever they currently have).

Come on, lets make this fun. Heck, lets have slalom style cat racing, just pure speed with basic reaching like legs and lots of marks. I can imagine a race course that is a bunch of "slightly higher then a reach" upwind legs, then one kick butt downwind run, one loop, winner takes all.

Lets have some imagination....

Moth would be a cool singlehander. Checkout this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRNfx317oLU

Wow! What is the antenna thingey on the bow for?

The spring loaded wand at the bow works like a sensor, when it reaches a certain speed it extends and
changes the pitch of the horizontal foil at the end of the centerboard thereby lifting the whole thing out of the water.

IMHO the IOC will never allow the Moth as it is today though, to much development going on (like wings!):

That "thing" is a feeler which adjusts the picth of the foil so the boat doesn't jump up out of the water.

OK, here's what we need to "develop", a flying Catamaran! All we need to do is figure out how to scale up the wings these guys made for their windsurfers and put them up on half a mast, and bingo, it's "up up and Away!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CODHj3GrQes&feature=related

Hey.... no poaching by kibitzers...
Timbo was invited to come to Gainesville to sail one of these that actually works (<--- see my avatar thumbnail).
Ain't seed Hide nor Hair of the Ol' Boy.

I'll get up there one of these days Dave! Just before Christmas I have to drive up I 75 to Auburn to pick up the kids...and 3 horses...so if I have some time and the weather's good, I could drop in on my way up. If not that trip, then maybe two weeks after Xmas when I return them.

Deal- lemme know.

Quoting Julian Bethwaite: "the Laser was not designed for races".