International 14 Mailing List
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From: Charles Crosby (ccrosby@mweb.co.za)
Date: Thu 11 Nov 1999 - 16:46:51 GMT
Douglas McIntosh wrote:
>First, 'Level" racing, is when boats similar to each other race on an even
level.
OK, fair enough. We can take "Level racing" to mean competing under an
agreed set of rules without handicapping.
>Benedict I races head to head with the bieker III. The difference is that
>they were built under a different set of constraints, resulting in a
>predictable ending.
I would quite like to hear what the designers think, how competitive would a
Benedict I be against a hypothetical Bieker (or whatever), designed in 1999
under pre '96 rules? I expect that the designers have learnt a few tricks
since 1990, and the results would also be predictable. I suspect that the
difference would be similar to that between a modified Benedict I and a new
boat. The question is not academic - it relates to the very nature of a
development class. Old I-14's become obsolete, it is simply the nature of
the class. Some remain competitive longer than others, but you should never
find the 5o5 situation where 13 year old boats are still competitive at
world championship level.
I don't think that anyone can argue against stability in the rules.
Continuous development within a stable set of rules makes sense. What
doesn't is stagnation under a set of rules with some weird anomalies,
followed by a periodic clean-up and a mad scramble of expensive development,
to be repeated in future. Hence the idea of simplifying the rules as much
as possible, which should help to avoid the periodic clean-up cycle.
>I think that there is support for keeping
>the rule changes to where new boats don't become obsolete so fast
OK, fair enough. But it can be quite hard to predict. Would the '96 rule
changes have gone through if people had realised how uncompetitive a
modified pre-'96 boat would be?
>It's hard to build a fleet if prospective members see it as a
>money throwaway contest.
<p>I thought that was the very definition of sailing ;-)
>Douglas McIntosh
>(Flameproof)
<p>Wouldn't dream of flaming anyone, I'm just an innocent outsider making
unbiased observations ;-)
Charles
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