International 14 Mailing List
| 14 | ||
From: Paul Bieker (pbieker@serv.net)
Date: Fri 07 Jan 2000 - 23:53:50 GMT
It's nice to hear Emett taking the time to put his observations into words -
it was worth the read. There's a lot to be learned from the history of
skiffs in Australia (and especially Sydney). It's where I went when I was
getting ready to design a boat for the amalgamated rule.
I'm just finishing up my boat. It has neat telescoping carbon racks that
can be adjusted anywhere from the current 6' to about 7.5'. The plan is to
do some two boat testing in different wind strengths this Spring to
determine percentage speed differences upwind and downwind as well as more
subjective notes on the effects of increased beam on rig tune, boat
handling, etc. These will be circulated prior to the Worlds so that we can
have an informed discussion by that time. As noted in my earlier note, the
US has voted to do a trials on the wider beam later this year once we've
settled on a good beam.
I agree with Emmett that increased beam is about the cheapest way to
increase the speed of the boats. I think we should go as wide as we can go
without necessitating stiffer or taller spars (expensive) or skewing the
boats too much towards lightweight sailors (reducing the pool of potential
sailors). His comment on removing limitations on upwind sail area was
interesting as it might open up the boat to a wider range of crew weights:
big guys can get big relatively inefficient sails and little guys can get
smaller more efficient sails. I would only worry that the sails would be
more custom and therefore more expensive and stumps might end up mandatory
(they're a pain to rig). It would be nice to hear from the sailmakers.
Emmett's right in that we have great potential as the world's first truly
international developmental skiff class. We just have to make sure our
boats are skiffs in the true sense of the term. As much as I luv 'em, at
present I think the boats are borderline skiffs.
-Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4.