Painting a hull after its built is "the normal maintenance procedure"?

as non english native, I look for a dictionnary definition of routine (the word used in the rules) :

1.a customary or regular course of procedure.
2.commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.
3.regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.
4.an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response: Don't give me that brotherly-love routine!

in this case:

I wash my hull, take-off the stickers organisation is routine maintenance.
Repairing a hole is also routine maintenance every time you have to do it.
Painting an entire hull just after its building is obviously not a routine.


But this is not a word issue.
This rule (as other one) can be changed but with one year notice, in order to be fair.
All the boat maker playing same game.

Franck,

You can think what you like, but I have discussed he matter at length with ISAF and it's perfectly legal to paint the hulls after manufacture.

But that does not appear to be what the intent of the rule is. According to the rule, boats are to be manufactured with a gelcoat finish, paint is to be used as a repair/maintenace solution, not as a means to refinish the boat to gain an perceived advantage. (if you are so insistant that the boats be painted instead of gelcoat, other than a performance advantage, what could your motivation be)?

+1

There have been painted F18's from the very inception of the class. Paintis not a new method to surface coat an F18.

How could you use gelcoat to surface coat a wood-epoxy f18? This build method has been approved since day one and yet some people in the class seem to have forgotten

This is not an acceptable reason to not follow the intent of the rule. The rule says gelcoat, so why are you so insistant on paint.

Its pretty simple, We have a production method that uses paint. we can lower our production cost with paint and we believe its a better product.

The Intention of the class was to allow cost effective racing to all members, And from day 1 it has been possible to paint your boat. Nobody has ever used gelcoat on a wood boat, they paint them. If you are building in a high labour cost country then you would use paint. Its saves time and therefore money.

There is no difference in performance and there is no cost increase, so why would anyone want to stop it?

Plywood-epoxy F18's are illegal unless they are made of balsa.

I am with Macca. I do not see what the "intent" of the rule matters when it would have been perfectly easy to write them otherwise. If painting a boat after manufacture was not allowed there are various wordings that could have made this clear.

As far as I am concerned, ambiguity is laziness and when rules are written with ambiguity it can only be interpreted as intentional.

Cheers,
Karl

D.3.1 MATERIALS
(a) The hull shells shall be built from polyester or vinylester resin, glass
fibres, polyester gelcoat, a core of PVC, balsa or felt, the combination of wood-epoxy, injected plastic, which shall not be altered other than locally for fittings, and passage of equipment and normal reinforcement. Epoxy glue is permitted for joining components. Every material that is not expressly permitted is prohibited.

Looks like wood-epoxy is allowed.

And so if the class has approved the wood-epoxy method of building, how do they think you can apply polyester gelcoat to such a hull??

You have to use paint!!

Paint is not a new development in the class, its just an issue now because a painted boat is winning.

If, as you argue, paint is such a superior product to use to finish boats, why are the major players in the class (Hobie, AHPC, Nacra), not turning out painted boats instead of gelcoated boats? I am not trying to be argumentative here, there must be a reason and I am really interested to know what it is.

The existing large manufacturers have developed their build methods down the gelcoat pathway, as there is no performance difference it makes no sense for them to change.

We started with a clean sheet of paper and as such we were able to choose the best, most cost effective method available. Nacra and AHPC produce their boats in low labour cost countries, whereas we are producing in Europe and as such we are trying to minimise costs via lowering the time spend per hull. Paint is proven to be a quicker method to complete a hull as you can spray all the seams whereas gelcoat takes about 8-10 hours per hull to finish the seams.

Wow, I have read that rule wrong for years. I thought it was trying to say that only a "wood" epoxy could be used. I even asked for a clarification once about what epoxy would count as "wood" epoxy. Yet another example of poorly worded rules.

That seems a bit unfair Macca, so far it has only won one event and it was sailed by someone who could make a bathtub go fast.

Here is the origin of many wrong thinking.

Indeed, a painted or gel-coated boat is not winning. Never.
The sailors did.
By their talent and work.

The spirit of F18 is to have very close boat in order to have close fight in real time, where sailors skill and decision make the difference.

What is the sport interest to win if the boat is faster ?
F18 isn't Formula 1 racing.

Though it is always a ordinary commercial interest to make people believe that new brand are faster.

It's, of course not, a question of person. For me, to be with or against anybody isn't the path.

On the paint question the very last TC (long and hard) work report show that there is not consensus between manufacturers.

In the same time ISAF has confirmed the World Council (WC) decisions of november, that everybody can check by crossing the minutes of the WC and the last ISAF publication.

ISAF is a big machine so they process step by step and in a very logical way: written interpretation (cleaning that what WC ask), amendments and then updating class rules.

http://www.sailing.org/2129.php

It is always possible to ask for interpretation of the interpretation done by ISAF, but I can't see why ISAF people would change their mind in a few days. There is no more ambiguity. By the way ISAF changed the chapter of the maintenance item in order to stress that "routine maintenance" is under sailor responsability and add polyester gel coat in the list of materials.

ISAF is the third institution,in the process of decision: it is a team work.

First step is the Technical comittee (TC), composed by boats and sails makers and collecting point of view from industry people: Goodall, Boulogne, Soldano, Lauriot-Prevost, Contreas, Rogers, Melvin, Jary...

They give advices but it is the WC which decide and vote.

WC, the second step, is composed mostly by F18 sailors and elected by F18 sailors.

For the WC, nations aren't the key for the weight of vote.
One French/Italian/Ned F18 member is not more important but not less than one US, Australian or Argentinian F18 members.

That is important, because on one hand you have (respectable) commercial interest, on the other hand: class of F18 owner/members interest.

Indeed, guys who paid their boat, do vote the rules.

Please read the Don Finlay (TC Chairman) text which explain that better than I can do with my poor english:

http://tinyurl.com/7vpfmz6

The main reason of the F18 success is that we're sailing F18 for fun.
And only Champions win, not the boat.

Franck Tiffon
WC french representative -www.f18.fr-
F18 sailor since october 1994 (White Hawk with gel coat ;-)
Capricorn F18 FRA 327

The answer is clearly stated in the Nov 2011 WC minutes.

"The view of the committee is that it is not desirable at this point to have boats supplied with an epoxy finish from the factory.

It was discussed that epoxy coatings have some potential advantages for the class, particularly for maintenance. But it is felt that the current risk to the class of having boats marketed and sold with 'premium' epoxy coatings is undesirable, and a sufficient risk to the class right now to justify strict control."

That statement in addition to Don Finlay's (TC Chairman) January article about preserving the value in the existing F-18 fleet makes it clear why the the action was taken.

It presumes that the sailors do not see through the marketing spin and would cause an overnight devaluation in the existing inventory of boats. A by-product is that it protects the gel-coat based builders' market share.

Unfortunately, the painted boats were in compliance with the rules before the recent revision. It smacks of protectionism and assumes that the racers are "lemmings" to the latest fad and that we need to be protected from ourselves. If the information was out that a gel-coat finish is no slower or faster than an epoxy finish, the percieved threat would be invalid.

Please excuse my ignorance, but does "epoxy finish" or "Premium epoxy coating" equal paint?

Nobody really knows!!

If you ask some of the top designers in he world they will say that there is no difference between paint of any type, and gelcoat in terms of performance.