J70, cheating and pros

[chuso007]

http://www.mascalzonelatino.it/eng/node/1856

good morning

Interesting, Google translation:

"The J70 World Championship is undoubtedly the most beautiful event of the world sailing season. After a long discussion in the family I was able to convince my son Achille, who usually regattas on the Melges 20, to ride on the J70 too to have the opportunity to have fun together and maybe even spit a little while in the evening, in front of a good glass of wine , duly red.

Achille has never raced in class J70, bought a new sailboat and sent it to one of the reference yards to fix the imperfections on the keel, as required by the class rule (C.8.1.C) . The boat thus, and again never put on the water before, came to its first degree that, as between the seller and the international class, would have been made during the preventive checks. During the aforementioned inspections a keel was found to be non-conforming to the light of which the officer told us that it was enough for him to pass the tonnage again with a new and conforming keel.

Once we got the tracker approval, we bought the keel of a new boat, regularly certified by the French manufacturer, from the Italian dealer.

The boat at that point was restored to the trails within the time limits set by the Notice of Race over all the controls and getting all the tonnage records where no prescriptions were made. All this happened, and the boat's weight was exceeded, Sunday, September 10 at 12 noon. Timing also has its importance, but on this we will be back soon.

On September 11, after the skipper briefing, shortly after the closure of the trains and the subdivision of the fleets, my son's boat was in the Red group. the organizing committee, at 19:00, issued a statement stating that 7 boats had been inscribed on the basis of a report from the Techinical Committee stating that the affected boats had modified the keel by breaking the rule of class C.8.1. That's what happened.

Incidentally, it is fair and sacrosanct that we can not make changes to the appendices, but it turns out that last year at the San Francisco World Championships some participants were allowed to work on non-conforming keels, allowing them to regatta. I could also add that the checks were fairly scrupulous for some boats and a little less zealous with others, but as Andreotti said, "law applies to enemies and is interpreted for friends ...". I was talking ahead of schedule and it is a bit strange that the Organizing Committee, reading the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, makes such a serious decision only a few hours before the first race.

Several weeks ago, the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda had already refused to admit his friend Pietro Manunta of Olbia, one of the founders of Mascalzone Latino, because after July 3, deadline, even though it was the Yacht Club's faculty to accept it with a surplus. A bit strange, however, was the persistence of refusal even when we were informed by some competing friends who had given up on the race and eventually left the seat to us.

At this point I submitted a formal request to the organization to replace me with my son, at the helm of my regularly accepted boat. I made this decision animated by the desire to bring my son Achille to a magnificent class to which I will never miss my modest logistical support in transport. The request was rejected by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, read organization without any motivation.

It is a beautiful World Championship, but it was badly grounded, excluding 7 competitive teams, 5 of which had regularized their boats (San Francisco docet) and arbitrarily excluded others who would like to participate: what is the purpose of writing in the Notice of Race can they accept subscriptions after July 3rd, paying 250,00 € more? Maybe why would there be a third Mascalzone Latino in the race?

Organized dangerously bad even at sea, ridiculously setting up a single race field for 180 competitors. A choice dictated, of course, by saving, as it is well-known, of a poor Yacht Club with resources.
That said, we pack up the boats and leave, even my race, but sailing is fun, as well as passion, and what has happened is political, only political and still political. I was honored to be a member of the Costa Smeralda Yacht Club for a few decades and the great honor of being awarded the Gold Guide of the Club. But those were other times and with other men. The club was governed by the never too lazy Commodore Gianfranco Alberini, True Sea Man and True Commander. I left the Club when unfortunately it was missing and replaced"

 

[Guest]

What I want to know is what kind of prize money purses do the winners get at these J70 events?  It must be some damn good $$ to make it worthwhile to go to this much effort to bend or break the rules on this level. What are we talking about.....?  $25K?  $50K?  What?

 

[roca]

Interesting, Google translation:

"The J70 World Championship is undoubtedly the most beautiful event of the world sailing season. After a long discussion in the family I was able to convince my son Achille, who usually regattas on the Melges 20, to ride on the J70 too to have the opportunity to have fun together and maybe evenFOOL EACH OTHER in the evening, in front of a good glass of wine , duly red.

Achille has never raced in class J70, bought a new sailboat and sent it to one of the reference yards to fix the imperfections on the keel, as PROVIDED FOR by the class rule (C.8.1.C) . The boat thus, and again never put on the water before, came to its first MEASURE that, as DECIDED between the seller and the international class, would have been made during the preventive checks. During the aforementioned inspections a keel was found to be non-conforming THEREFORE the officer told us that it was enough for him to APPROVE THE BOAT, TO COME BACK again with a new and conforming keel.

Once we got the MEASURER approval, we bought the keel of a new boat, regularly certified by the French manufacturer, from the Italian dealer.

The boat at that point was TAKEN BACK to the MAESUREMENT within the time limits set by the Notice of Race over all the controls and getting all APPROVAL, no prescriptions were made. All this happened, and the boat's was APPROVED, Sunday, September 10 at 12 noon. Timing also has its importance, but on this we will be back soon.

On September 11, after the skipper briefing, WAY  after the closure of the MEASURES and the subdivision of the fleets, my son's boat was in the Red group. the organizing committee, at 19:00, issued a statement stating that 7 boats had been inscribed on the basis of a report from the Techinical Committee stating that the affected boats had modified the keel by breaking the rule of class C.8.1. That's what happened.

Incidentally, it is fair and sacrosanct that we can not make changes to the appendices, but it turns out that last year at the San Francisco World Championships some participants were allowed to work on non-conforming keels, allowing them to regatta. I could also add that the checks were fairly scrupulous for some boats and a little less zealous with others, but as Andreotti said, "law applies to enemies and is interpreted for friends ...". I was talking ahead of TIMING and it is a bit strange that the Organizing Committee, THAT IS Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, makes such a serious decision only a few hours before the first race.

Several weeks ago, the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda had already refused to admit OUR friend Pietro Manunta of Olbia, one of the founders of Mascalzone Latino, because after THE July 3 deadline, even though it was the Yacht Club's faculty to accept it with an EXTRE CHARGE. A bit strange, however, was the persistence of refusal even when we were informed by some competing friends who had given up on the race and eventually left the PLACE to THEM.

At this point I submitted a formal request to the organization to replace me with my son, at the helm of my regularly accepted boat. I made this decision animated by the desire to bring my son Achille to a magnificent class to which I will never miss my modest logistical support in transport. The request was rejected by the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda, THAT IS organizaER, without any motivation.

It is a beautiful World Championship, but it was badly grounded, excluding 7 competitive teams, 5 of which had regularized their boats (San Francisco docet) and arbitrarily excluded others who would like to participate: what is the purpose of writing in the Notice of Race can they accept subscriptions after July 3rd, paying 250,00 € more? Maybe why would there be a third Mascalzone Latino in the race?

Organized dangerously bad even at sea, ridiculously setting up a single race field for 180 competitors. A choice dictated, of course, by saving, as it is well-known, of a poor Yacht Club with resources.
That said, we pack up the boats and leave, even my BOAT WHICH COULD RACE, but sailing is fun, as well as passion, and what has happened is political, only political and AGAIN political. I was honored to be a member of the Costa Smeralda Yacht Club for a few decades and the great honor of being awarded the Gold Guide of the Club. But those were other times and with other men. The club was governed by the never too MOURNED? Commodore Gianfranco Alberini, True Sea Man and True Commander. I left the Club when unfortunately HE was missing and replaced"

THEN COMES A PERSONAL ATTACK ON ACTUAL COMODORO MR. BONADEO, (QUITE FUNNY, ON HIS SAILING SKILLS AND GUARDROBE) AND AT LAST E PROMESES TO GO TO COURT WITH LAYERS AND SO ON...

tried to fix the most evident google errors

hope I did not do worse  

 

[freddy]

Re Mascalzone letter, what I don't understand from his testimony is very simple:

- Why did he feel the need to alter the keel as provided by the builder? (Because that's what everyone does?)

- If there was something wrong with the keel he should have rejected it?

But no, as is the norm these days is the first thing they (all) do, is send the boat to the yard and get the keel refaired, lowered etc etc. The argument that everyone else is doing it, the only way we can be competitive is to do this, simply doesn't hold water......

So kudos to the Jury, Italian Class Association for standing up to this.......

 

[roca]

Re Mascalzone letter, what I don't understand from his testimony is very simple:

- Why did he feel the need to alter the keel as provided by the builder? (Because that's what everyone does?)

- If there was something wrong with the keel he should have rejected it?

well to optimize the boat inside the rules has to be a credit, it is main part of this sport, this is what sailing OD and also olyimpics is about;

They are a top team in the world, what do you expect...? 

He says it is in the class  rules  (C.8.1.C)

 

[Presuming Ed]

C.8.1 MODIFICATIONS, MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR
The following is permitted without the approval of the LM.

(c) Gelcoat  scratches  and  minimal  damaged  areas and  minor  molding  imperfections such as print-through may be sanded and repaired, provided the as-molded shape in not altered. (sic)

So if you choose a keel where (under suitable lighting) the whole thing shows print through...? (G, D &R)

 

[Presuming Ed]

What I want to know is what kind of prize money purses do the winners get at these J70 events?  It must be some damn good $$ to make it worthwhile to go to this much effort to bend or break the rules on this level. What are we talking about.....?  $25K?  $50K?  What?

Exactly the same amount of cash that those amateur rugby players and cyclists who get drug bans are winning. Some people need to win, no matter what.

 

[JimC]

It would be interesting to see the measurer's report on what they found to cause them to exclude the boats.

Especially interesting to know why, if keel modifications are as widespread in the fleet as some posters have suggested, only 7 boats have been excluded.

 

[Moonduster]

It's an interesting turn of events and one must applaud both the measurement and organizing committees for having the intestinal fortitude to send so many competitors packing. I certainly hope they did not refund entry fees.

That said, what's going on is neither a reasonable approach to fixing the problem nor a reasonable approach to fixing the symptom, each of which must be addressed.

Addressing The Symptom

Without clear codification by ISAF within the RRS that gross measurement violations are unacceptable, officials have no incentive to enforce rules and and cheating runs rampant. And by unacceptable, these violations must be met with lifetime bans for every sailor named on the entry and, too, that the hull is permanently banned from the class. 

It's important to understand that measurement committees are in an untenable situation as those who try to be serious are often drummed out of a job by those willing to be less scrupulous. Organizers exert constant pressure to make measurement fast and easy,  and the undercurrent to avoid embarrassment of organizers, owners, crew and suppliers is strong. There is no incentive at the measurement level to make a stink and few measurers who do make a stink have lengthy careers.

The only people with anything to lose are those who are lucky enough to have found themselves as professional sailors and none of them want to give up their seat at that table to something so stupid and easily avoidable. And while it's often the case that a given sailor on a cheating program may not have known about the cheating, if they know they'll be held responsible you can be sure that they'll do their utmost to ensure it doesn't happen on their watch.

Is it entirely fair? No, but it's a lot more fair than continuing to allow cheating of this kind on a scale of this magnitude. And by this magnitude, the recent turn of events would seem to have affected about 5% or 1 in 20 boats. That puts one-design racing on par with doping scandals in biking!

The Problem

It's easy to claim that the builders or the owners are the problem here, but neither of those claims stand much scrutiny. At issue is that the boats aren't built to a rigid one-design standard and, as a result, coming off the production line today's boat may not be as competitive as yesterday's boat.

The manufacturer has little incentive to fix this problem because they don't know when building the first 25 hulls whether the class will become successful. The cost savings in good tooling won't pay off unless a few 100 boats are built.

That reality creates an environment in which owners are incentivised to cheat because the only penalties are erratically enforced and have minor consequences. We can address the incentive with a lifetime ban, but that doesn't address the problem in the slightest.

So if not builders or owners, who? The answer is the Class association.

By adopting a position that you must race the piece of shit you bought, the Class creates an environment that is rife for cheating. And Class associations have been willfully creating this kind of culture and then standing around casually denying responsibility for decades.

One cannot try to have reasonable one-design racing without boats that reasonably conform to a given shape. When a Class grows at the rate and to the size of the J70 fleet, it's the responsibility of the Class to adopt a reasonable approach to allowing owners to normalize the piece of shit they brought in an effort to create the level playing field upon which one-design racing is said to exist.

Whether this results in an A and B fleet, a modest weight penalty for a "normalized" boat or some other approach is a Class problem to solve. But it's a problem that can only be solved by the Class.

Should the class put pressure on the manufacturer to clean up their act? Of course. And to be clear, manufacturers cranking out this kind of lousy workmanship should be shamed loudly, repeatedly and publicly.  Reasonable production standards for tooling and build are not that difficult to put in place and tend to drive costs down, not up, as volumes grow.

 

[AndreasE]

This would be a good time to start shopping for a J/70 for handicap racing, should be some cheap hulls on the market soon

 

[RATM]

Moonduster postulates that the root cause here is the manufacturer. In the case of a J/70, how many builders are out there? Don't these things come off the factory floor conforming to the class rules? If not, why not?

 

[KC375]

It seems the problem is that variation in production means some boats conforming to the class rules (i.e. no modifications) are faster than others conforming to the class rules.

That would be a problem originating with the manufacturer. To fix that by allowing post production optimization of correction seems entirely the wrong approach.

Instead of building a cheap boat that requires expensive post production work why not build a boat that is consistent.

 

[rgeek]

The problem with that argument is that the number of people who want to play that game is small and everyone else will eventually walk away.

The problem? it's catch 22.

You cant have a big (Championship) fleet unless the boats are economical to campaign and the regatta sociable. That means wide build tolerances, popular holiday destinations/where there is a fleet and days racing rather than sitting on the beach waiting the everyone to pass measurement.

Wide tolerances become material when it comes to winning in a big fleet and big fleets attract people who like winning (even better beating lots of other people) more than they care about how or the people they beet.

 

[knuckles]

I think the J/70 class is being put into a similar position that the J/24 class was put into decades ago.  A fun boat that is accessible and liked by many, built with loose tolerances and sometimes running changes.  A comprehensive measurement approach including defined measurements (with tolerances) and class controlled templates may be where this class ends up.  And that is a good thing if no more reason to put the boats on a level playing field not only for the purpose of technical measurement, but also as a perception by outsiders that the boats are truly one design.

 

[rgeek]

A perception that the boats are truly one design just adds value to winning the World Championships. That's just throwing fuel on the fire.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

It's great that SA will be there, I have a lot of friends from Vigo heading there. I'll be following the race with interest...

Tell me about them and I'll get some interviews

 

[teleboxAUT118]

Alan, please also give some love and attention to team Eker from Turkey. The owner runs a big Yoghurt business in Istanbul and races also with a Melges32 in the European series. He has a young and very enthusiastic team and would deserve some attention. If you find them, just send best regards from TamTam Racing. We trained with them in Istanbul with our Farr25 and were impressed by how fast they came to speed. Cheers and many thanks!

 

[frostbit]

It's an interesting turn of events and one must applaud both the measurement and organizing committees for having the intestinal fortitude to send so many competitors packing. I certainly hope they did not refund entry fees.

That said, what's going on is neither a reasonable approach to fixing the problem nor a reasonable approach to fixing the symptom, each of which must be addressed.

Addressing The Symptom

Without clear codification by ISAF within the RRS that gross measurement violations are unacceptable, officials have no incentive to enforce rules and and cheating runs rampant. And by unacceptable, these violations must be met with lifetime bans for every sailor named on the entry and, too, that the hull is permanently banned from the class. 

It's important to understand that measurement committees are in an untenable situation as those who try to be serious are often drummed out of a job by those willing to be less scrupulous. Organizers exert constant pressure to make measurement fast and easy,  and the undercurrent to avoid embarrassment of organizers, owners, crew and suppliers is strong. There is no incentive at the measurement level to make a stink and few measurers who do make a stink have lengthy careers.

The only people with anything to lose are those who are lucky enough to have found themselves as professional sailors and none of them want to give up their seat at that table to something so stupid and easily avoidable. And while it's often the case that a given sailor on a cheating program may not have known about the cheating, if they know they'll be held responsible you can be sure that they'll do their utmost to ensure it doesn't happen on their watch.

Is it entirely fair? No, but it's a lot more fair than continuing to allow cheating of this kind on a scale of this magnitude. And by this magnitude, the recent turn of events would seem to have affected about 5% or 1 in 20 boats. That puts one-design racing on par with doping scandals in biking!

The Problem

It's easy to claim that the builders or the owners are the problem here, but neither of those claims stand much scrutiny. At issue is that the boats aren't built to a rigid one-design standard and, as a result, coming off the production line today's boat may not be as competitive as yesterday's boat.

The manufacturer has little incentive to fix this problem because they don't know when building the first 25 hulls whether the class will become successful. The cost savings in good tooling won't pay off unless a few 100 boats are built.

That reality creates an environment in which owners are incentivised to cheat because the only penalties are erratically enforced and have minor consequences. We can address the incentive with a lifetime ban, but that doesn't address the problem in the slightest.

So if not builders or owners, who? The answer is the Class association.

By adopting a position that you must race the piece of shit you bought, the Class creates an environment that is rife for cheating. And Class associations have been willfully creating this kind of culture and then standing around casually denying responsibility for decades.

One cannot try to have reasonable one-design racing without boats that reasonably conform to a given shape. When a Class grows at the rate and to the size of the J70 fleet, it's the responsibility of the Class to adopt a reasonable approach to allowing owners to normalize the piece of shit they brought in an effort to create the level playing field upon which one-design racing is said to exist.

Whether this results in an A and B fleet, a modest weight penalty for a "normalized" boat or some other approach is a Class problem to solve. But it's a problem that can only be solved by the Class.

Should the class put pressure on the manufacturer to clean up their act? Of course. And to be clear, manufacturers cranking out this kind of lousy workmanship should be shamed loudly, repeatedly and publicly.  Reasonable production standards for tooling and build are not that difficult to put in place and tend to drive costs down, not up, as volumes grow.

In this case, the class association is hamstrung by the Johnstone mafia. The class association is not empowered to make the changes to the class rules that would make this a better situation.  The Johnstones cling stubbornly to the conceit that all boats are identical when delivered. 

 

[MR.CLEAN]

Talked to about a dozen people today off the record about the measurement stuff, including two of the boats which were refused entry under 76 and several coaches and class officials.

There is a lot of shit flying around that is obscuring the matter thanks to Vincenzo's letter (which, properly translated, is one of the funniest bits of PR I've ever seen in sailing) and the longtime animosity between Onorato and the YCCS.  Regardless of that narrative (where they claim the rejection comes on a personal basis from the Club), the truth is much more simple.

The keels are not J/70 keels, they are significantly wider at the bottom than the molds they are supposed to have come out of.  They also have lost most of the round 'belly' that extended down from the bottom of the bulb.  It's not fairing, it's not repairing, it's straight up shape-changing.

Most or all of the boats were worked on by the same guy in Riva Del Garda.  He's well known (though I only know him by his nickname, which I remember as Fafo) for years for high quality work on the Melges as well as Finns and other olympic boats.

In my mind, there's no way this guy does this level of work without talking to at least someone in charge on the teams. 

Most of the effected boats' responses was 'but we've been measured before and we passed', which is not a response.  Most of the owners 'didn't know anything about it', which is not relevant at all.

Instead of the Class telling the bad boats to fix the problem - which we've all unfortunately become used to in one-design classes - they told them to go home.  And I like it.

 

[rgeek]

Even badly translated the bit that didn't get quoted here is a classic!