So...it was the rating? Did they regularly race as one fleet, alone, or were the being scored with all the other boats you mentioned?

Over here, at least in FL, if we have 5 or more of ...anything, they get scored as their own fleet, vs. all mixed together, except at the Alter Cup Qualifier events, where all the different classes are racing against each other on handicap, to determine who gets the slots.

There is no doubt 4 hands are more efficient than two, when you have a spinnaker to deal with. And the extra eyeballs helps too, but if you can't find good, reliable crew, then what?

Sail what you have. I'm happy!

That's why I got into the F16 class, crew is optional, not required, for racing. With good crew there is no doubt I go faster than without, when it's blowing over about 10, but since good crew is hard to find, it's nice to have the -no crew- option. And if you are at a big regatta and your crew gets sick for a day or two, you can still race, like Greg Goodall at Worlds, right? It's all good.

Single catamaran start on Sundays ranging from Dart 16's to Nacra 20's, doesn't seem to matter as most cats are pretty nifty off the line, . Wednesdays eves is fun racing, it can be 30+ boats ranging from lasers to Nacra 20's and Tornados. It can be entertaining to say the least on the start line with the 10 slowest boats all lined across the start line at 0 speed ready to go with the other 20 all baring down on the line at speed, yes we do have some shouting and whinging about tactics at the time, but its all done with great aplomb and little bickering afterwards as we tuck into a good supper and a beer, its a good night out and more should try the social racing.

Wayne, My theory... having watched the F17 US fleet do the same thing as your Dachet fleet.. not to mention a few A class fleets melt away....

There is nothing social about racing single handed... It is all about you and making your boat go... and then sailing against your competitors on the course. It tends to be a dick forest on the beach as well. The only shared experience of the sailors is often the racing on the course... 10 boats is still 10 guys hanging at the keg. That gets old as well.

The long term successful fleets tend to have a goal that the class members are working toward. EG... success at the Continentals or Worlds or at the big club regatta on Labor Day... whatever... Without a personal goal that is also shared by enough of your buddies... you are basically just sailing in circles and then they confirm the local pecking order at the end of the racing weekend with the score sheet. After a few regattas... the pecking order is now set in stone and now the question becomes... how do I move up? why is this fun?

The answer of course is a mix of practice, knowledge, talent and hardware and the match of you and your boat to local racing scene. (Money and time are important as well but not much point discussing these issues) When you get a group of diverse individuals working towards something who also want to have fun... it all hangs together.

So... for single handed sailors...
Practicing is lonely.... Unless you find tuning partners aiming for the same goal... Practicing get's old and rather quickly too.

Knowledge... Sailing single handed is the ultimate school of hard knocks way of learning how to race boats. You have to see Sail shape that is correct and it changes with time as the sail stretches.. You have to learn how to recognize the significant shifts. Half the time... you have no idea what happened and that is either frustrating (you will quit soon) or challenging (you will work at it) Bottom line... it's a tough game to learn on your own.

Talent, Well, God deals this out. Still, a great deal of fun can be had with ordinary talent.

Hardware, well for obvious reasons.... hardware becomes the easy solution... more and better will certainly keep life interesting for a little bit of time....

The match... If the fleet sails Hobie 16's and you have a NF20... The 5 laps around the short course for you will not be fun.

If your club thinks that 4 and 1/2 hours of racing in 12 to 15 is the standard of fun.... Your 50 year old butt will be out of gas after two, maybe three races... and it will be no fun for races 3 and 4.... The match is important. Wayne mentions SCHRS ratings..... And this is another match issue.... if the F18's are easy to sail to their rating and your F16uni is 40% more difficult, Your twin on the F18 will win by a mile...but that is the weekend racing scene so this is not a good match. (Now, If your goal was to do well at the Continentals.... well you could use the weekend regattas as just the practice needed to get to the Big event...)

So... I think that a single handed fleet needs real buy in...of each individual and the group to a set of racing goals.. no matter how modest... Equally important... you need to have a shared commitment for everyone to be learning more about sailboat racing your single hander.... IE. Tuning partner, Debriefs, Clinics, Coaching.

When you half butt these foundations... the fleet melts way. The pecking order is set in stone... the fun factor drops and the reasons to show up decrease.

The same core discussion was just on a SA thread on the A class. Itaxx suggested that A Class Development was a problem....just as Wayne suggests SCHRS ratings are a problem. GBR made the counter argument to Ita for development in the A class.

A final observation unique to A class is that the A class tends to attract very accomplished sailors who can hop on a boat and ratchet to the top of the pecking order in short order... They already have enough knowledge and talent to play the game... An average sailor from a less technical class will hop in not understanding the class culture and the nature of RACING single handed and he will be looking at a mountain of knowledge to acquire and little obvious way to get it.

The 505 class understands these dynamics and so they are really strong on getting you to play the 505 game... and if you burn out or loose interest... SELL YOUR BOAT pronto to somebody who wants to play

The Soling class tells new sailors... It will take you 10 years to get up to speed with the old guard... BUT they will be with you every step of the way.

Single handed classes are a real challenge because you just can't get GAsby to hop on your boat and show you what to look at or do.

As always... Your mileage may vary.

Mark,
I know you don't know me and sometimes I don't agree with you, but this is probably the smartest and wisest post I have seen anyone make on this board. You just went up a point or two in my portfolio of stocks!

Read it and whep, I think mark has hit the nail on the head.

Mike

Interesting and I do agree with what you say, but the racing scene is very fragile and the minute something comes out of kilter whether that be your drinking buddies no longer want to come out to play because they have 3 rugrats or their boat no longer excites them, then that one catalyst can cause quite a ripple in a very small pond.

I think the SCHRS issue with us was just a very small issue which should have been resolved with the amount of discussion that has been going on for some time with the SCHRS technical committee in the back ground. But that one issue then focused everyone in the fleet to actually ask whether they wanted to continue sailing or not. They voted with their feet and took the easy option of moving on ( yes I too was guilty ).

Is there a moral to this story, not really, lifes to short to over duly worry about these things and the new class I joined is a real steep and interesting learning curve.

I am wondering as this has edged so far off topic whether we should move it to a thread all of its own ?

Wayne; I have sent some feedback to the SCHRS group regarding the worlds results. I agree that something needs to be done now. Perhaps you could summarize your comments and send then in to Nick / William as well?

I wrote a white paper some time ago that has been "in the system" for a while (Submitted August 2010) proposing changes to the way single handed boats were rated.

http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-03%3A00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-03%3A00&max-results=50

Bundock talks about weight and women sailing the F16.

After getting back ( finally arrived in Holland after the car broke down) we where happy to see the Worlds as it was organised. Well done by the CVB .
I just did read about the one up against two up. Well what i can say is that the one up,s have almost no change to beat the 2 up's anymore, the performance between the 2 is so much difference that you only have a change 1 up below 8 knots otherwise the handling of the 2 up's is so much quicker with the spin that you always will loose this. I did sail at the Worlds for the first time this year the F16 Raptor ( no time because of the A project ) and it was going quite well but i found out the boat handling was not that automatic. This resulted in 2 capsizes in race 2 and a DNF in that race. The wind was almost everyday above 10 knots and this is the wind the 2 up's are favorite.
It was challeging to sail on MAubissan and difficult with all the gusts but overall personally i was not unpleased with the results sailed with almost no hours on the boat.
Up to the next event.

Hans

Well done!

Back! It was a great event, we had a lot of fun and enjoyed the sailing and the people. I did a (little) write up on the event here: Falcon BEL666 blog

Can't wait for the next Worlds!

Great write-up Kathleen! Thanks for doing that, great pictures too, I'll be waiting for the video.

Thanks Kathleen, very nice. I'm really looking forward to the movie.

Cheers!

Here's the movie, shot with my phone!

Falcons having fun at Bordeaux - movie

Enjoy

Very nice, thanks!

Nice video Gill. The music makes it. I like the look of the Glaser kites too.

Nice job Gilo, did you say you shot that with your Phone? How did you keep it dry? Was it in one of thos baggie things?

While there may be merit in some of your other comments, I think this is a huge generalization. I sail almost exclusively singlehanded, I love it and I find the whole experience extremely social - in fact that is a very large part of why I enjoy racing so much. But then I sail with CRAW, which is an extremely sociable, family oriented club. It's also helpful having other singlehanders in the club - Tom and I for example are at roughly similar levels of ability and we regularly discuss our performance and what we think is or isn't working for us.