Why no C class chatter?

Big discussion on Sailinganarchy. http://www.sailinganarchy.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=27245


Why so few A cat sailors speaking up?

Why so many F18, F16, Nacra, Hobie fans but not alot of other catamaran opinions/discussions?

I agree with you Bill, it's a shame we're not getting the 'C' discussion here. I've been following it on SA and have to say it looks to me that there may be a resurgence of interest in the 'C's again (and very welcome too!)

I remember the early C class races at Thorpe Bay in Essex when I was a mere nipper! Boats like Lady Helmsman, Snark, Opus and Miss Nylex. Wonderful boats, exciting to watch (even better to sail I would guess).

It's a travesty that the yachting media haven't started drumming things up yet. I hope that they jump on the bandwagon soon......

In Toronto a local sailor has bought a C class..Patient Lady VI and is giving a seminar tomorrow night for us. Should be good.

http://www.cat-alist.com/notices/2006/c_class_022806.pdf

probably because the C class is far from "working class" or corinthian.

Its hard for me to relate to sailing at that level of $$$.

So we should change the name of this forum to "Working Class Catamaran sailor?"

I just think that its a shame that for some reason this forum is avoided by some very bright, interesting people that are in the catsailing world. We could all learn volumes if Steve or guys like him attended these discussions.

Its not just the C Class, this forum doesnt seem to get much input from the A class world either. Bob Hodges posts our of courtesy, but most of those discussions go on elsewhere.

Bill

OK I'll bite. some of you know my handle from SA and some don't. For those that don't I'm on the Toronto C-class team.

We've been at it now for over a year and are making some good progress and learning a lot about the boats and the technology.

For those that don't know we have designed and are presently building a new boat. This followed the aquisition of Patient Lady VI by Fred, the team captain, last year.

So we've had some good on the water experiences and incorporated those learnings into our deign build process.

I'll answer any reasonable questions about the boat and the campaign etc, but I won't answer every question for a bunch of reasons, not being rude, simply prudent.

Cheers

Good to have you here! Remember, this is not SA...things are usually a bit more calm around here. Could you just keep us updated on your progress? I'm sure Rick and Mary would welcome any submissions for Catsailor Magazine (the printed version).

This is a coastal beachcat centric forum. It's eighteen feet or less at the local beach. Global multihull news is not widely followed here. It's a mystery.

Welcome aboard Blunted. I seem to remember an article about C Class in Sailing World last year sometime. Are they raced anywhere other than at the Little America's Cup (or whatever they call it now)? The big scene for them is Rhode Island right? People say they're expensive - how much did this guy pay for Patient Lady? Are they more or less expensive than a Volvo 40?

Are you chumming for sharks!?

The reason it is a mystery is not because there is no general interest about the C-Class. It is because there has been a media blackout on the C-Class for several years. They no longer seem to have a class association (if they ever did), and they are no longer an ISAF International Class, so they do not get publicity through the ISAF Newsletters.

It has always been like a treasure hunt to find out who is working on developing a C-Class cat for an "International" championship, which they are no longer "allowed" to have, as far as ISAF is concerned.

Apparently, no sailors were sanctioned (punished) by ISAF after participating in the last International C-Class Championship in 2004. But, you just never know when ISAF is going to come down with a heavy hand. And that makes it more difficult to get top sailors to participate in an event that might cost them their rights to sail in the Olympics and Pan-American Games and ISAf World events.

None of it makes sense to me.

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.

Great breakdown, Blunted. Thanks a lot.

What's this about sanctions? Sorry if I'm wandering into a minefield here, but if they're not using the hallowed name of the America'$ Cup anymore, why does the class still have to worry about what the ISAF thinks?

Three new I20s is probably out of range of most of the people on this forum, but I would think that beachcat sailors, especially those with an engineering bent (HELLO WOUTER) would be interested in C class for things that could easily carry over into smaller cats, like asymmetric boards for instance.

Long story on what the ISAF thinks, they say you cannot call it a "World championship" unless they endorse the event. they will only do that for certain classes who meet minimum requirments. In return, you get to use the rules that we all know and love.

As for the "Little Americas cup" moniker. That's another kettle of fish. It was a nickname coined in the 60's that followed the ICCT which was sailed in C-cats. It made sense because the same kind of intensive design development went onin the C-cats as did the AC ajnd they both ended in match racing events so it was a clos analoge.

Well the c-cats didn'r race for a while so Seacliff YC the holder of the ICCT deed of gift chose to run the event in HT18's or whatever boat it is today and "retained" the moniker, "Little Americas Cup". Many would argue, including me, that it's not right and that should be accorded to the c-cats. Now the AC management has wadedin and said nobody can use the Moniker "America's Cup" in anything anymore except for them.

Personally it doesn;t make a big difference to me but for teams who need to raise funds to compete through sponsors the name would presumably help a lot. A positive brand association as they say in the business. ACM would call it a copyright infringment.

don;t ya love politics?

A quick update folks, we had Patient Lady IV back on the water this past Saturday for a few hours.

Conditions were "spicy" for us out there with gusts over 25 knots on the odd occassion. Our chase boat pegged us at a sustained 25 knots boat speed on a few runs across the harbour. As a rule we don't go out to race in more than 20 knots wind speed.

We had a few scares with the boat getting a little wild on us.

Unfortunately on what was to be the last run of the day we blew up our camber control in the middle of a very large puff, when we were already going about as fast as we could. When the camber control broke we went from as depowered as we could be to as powered up as we could in about .02 seconds. I instantly blew the sheet off to slow up down but by then we had already broken out #3 element on the wing and poked numerous holes in the skin.

So we'l lbe back on the water hopefully within about 2 weeks.

A most exciting day all around.

some more

Very nice! It must have been an awesome days sailing, glad to hear that your breakage wasn't more serious <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for posting, seriously cool stuff!
Please keep them coming..


How are the curved daggerboards working out for you?



Rolf
PS: Nice ruddersystem!

Sorry, credit to Rob Patterson 49er guy in a tender for the awesome photos.

And yes for my first time on the water this year it was more than a little exciting.

getting rigged