We haven't ventured offshore but the chop in the bay gets pretty steep.
I would love to sail the boat in waves like you shared. Just haven't had the opportunity.
The Melges 15 / Future of American Double Handed Classes
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We haven't ventured offshore but the chop in the bay gets pretty steep.
I would love to sail the boat in waves like you shared. Just haven't had the opportunity.
Foredeck Shuffle
More of a Stoic Cynic, Anarchy Sounds Exhausting
Why? Seems plenty under powered.
At least it doesn't have a hull shaped like a spoon or a soggy cardboard box.
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Grande Mastere Dreade
Snag's spellchecker
they have sailing in the olympics ? who knew?
Foredeck Shuffle
More of a Stoic Cynic, Anarchy Sounds Exhausting
"Stop thinking about things like racism and don't rock the boat.", says Florida Man.
Is Cynicism Ruining Your Life?
The risks of indulging in cynical attitudes and the rewards of being positivewww.psychologytoday.com
BrightAyes
Anarchist
yes. next question?Is Cynicism Ruining Your Life?
The risks of indulging in cynical attitudes and the rewards of being positive
Steam Flyer
Sophisticated Yet Humble
I would hope that the Melges 15 is fast enough to not benefit from surfing. The Buccaneer (conventional spinnaker) and the Johnson 18 both are... when running in waves, the skipper looks ahead and steers for low spots. The boat planes faster than the local wave train.
Saves a lot of neck strain for the skipper, no trying to look back and catch the next crest.
I can confirm the boat is quite a bit faster than the waves downwind.
Except when you are a bad skipper and bury the bow straight into the next one. Stops you pretty quick.
M15 sails in big waves just fine. Very Steep chop is tough upwind but I would say that’s about the same as any modern dinghy.
Irrational 14
Super Anarchist
This isn't a Modern Dinghy.
Foredeck Shuffle
More of a Stoic Cynic, Anarchy Sounds Exhausting
When I look at a boat I tend to break it down into something like the following.
- Hull weight a product of modern materials and technique that results in improved SA/D and D/WL than older designs.
- Hull shapes that provide more righting moment for less weight with better shapes to minimize wetted surface in light air via bow loading and maximize stern area for control when on a plane.
- Hull shapes that track well upwind and pierce waves rather than ride over them and is more stable downwind.
- Hull that removes water out the stern faster than it comes into the cockpit via a false deck and open stern.
- Narrow chord, long foils for better control especially at speed.
- Mast with a modern design and materials to not just support a sail but provide automatic de-powering in gusts and high breeze and provide more longevity than prior materials.
- Sail design that is more powerful but easier to de-power when designed in conjunction with the mast and rigging.
- Sail materials and battening to provide better control and longevity.
- If there is a spinnaker, launch and retrieval systems that minimize human effort to reduce the complexity of hoists and douses while avoiding the damage that often occurs during those transitions.
- Rigging with both more details and simplified controls and providing for a cleaner cockpit for ease of sailing.
Not a bad list, but one that seems rather biased towards expensive boats (as you note) that are at their best in open water and moderate winds, and arguably that's not necessarily what "modern" must, or should, mean.
There was a htwo-person 15' hiking dinghy (pictured below) with just about all of the features you want about 20 years ago. It utterly flopped in the marketplace because it was too complicated and twitchy for most sailors, too hard to sail in confined waters of the typical club course, and yet too slow for the true fans of high speed. So why assume that it was right and the M15 is wrong?
After all, if fast is fun, why sail any non-foiling monohull dinghy instead of a board or cat? Even a Moth or 18 Foot Skiff wouldn't see which way a kitefoiler went in good conditions. Perhaps these days seahugging dinghy sailors should just admit that they can no longer come close to being leading edge in speed and concentrate on the other things dinghies still do really well?
Perhaps, therefore, we should call a boat "modern" even if, like the M15, it's not particularly light and doesn't have "modern" rig materials. At club level, dacron may well last longer for many sailors and full battens aren't necessarily better in the real world of light wind racing on small waters and less than perfect rigging and mooring areas.
If a boat is selling well to today's sailors - like the M15 is - isn't that evidence that it is actually more in tune with "modern sailing" than the more exotic boats that few modern sailors are buying?
After all, stuff like fully battened sails and self draining cockpits were around 50 years ago and carbon spars and laminate sails were seen in the '80s, so it's not as if they are "modern" anyway.
Perhaps in the 2020s we should re-assess where dinghies are in the sailing world and note that the classes that are selling well are generally ones where there have been lots of compromises that trade performance for ease of use, and that's what the modern world actually wants.
By the way, I've been lucky enough to be able to talk design with many of the best small-boat designers, and few (if any) of them today talk about maximising stern area for control; fast boats these days tend to much less planing area aft than those of the '70s and '80s to reduce wetted surface and to prevent nosediving. The way the Bieker boats made the Ice/Wedge style Australian 14s obsolete is an example of this, as is the development in classes like NS14s and the shape of Merlins.
Finally, if "fast is fun" why aren't you on a Formula cat or a foiler, at least? Around here, foilers have a yardstick of around 60 and the fastest thing similar to a Melges 15 (the one in the pic) is only rated 2/3 as fast. If it's really a case of "fast is fun" then you, and anyone who bought something like an upgraded M15, must be pretty miserable.
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Foredeck Shuffle
More of a Stoic Cynic, Anarchy Sounds Exhausting
Is that a 59er? That always looked like fun. I would own one if they were around here, it looks immensely fun.
Why not a foiling A-Cat or something else like that? Several reasons but I'll stick to the most important one. On the Chesapeake Bay, really most of the east coast United States from Connecticut to Georgia, you would be in displacement mode more often than not. Years ago while doing research to help the OA decide when to hold a North Americans for 505's, Bucc18's, J22's, in three different locations I pulled 20 years of NOAA data each time from relevant NOAA wind instruments with historical readings. After dumping that into a database and teasing out ranges for the expected hours of the day the event would occur I found that between June-August the wind is below 5kts on average. Expanding that range from April to October it is just below 7kts. It's is better if you include evening hours but that wasn't relevant to the events. I ws curious so I began pulling data from travel sites I had raced at and a pattern developed in the mid-southern US Atlantic coast, light breezes during expected race hours. Not very good for foilers or any boat that demands breeze to perform well. Hence my focus on powered up boats. Better to pick an over powered boat and sit on shore when it blows 25kts+ a few times a year than be in a boat that is struggling to hit hull speed most days of the year.
I used to help sell boats and what I learned is that fast catches most peoples eye. Take them out on a fast boat and manage it well for them and they get hooked, some even buy one. The problem is that most people cannot handle fast and a powered up boat will scare them and the sales pitch is over. Most people have very little understanding about boats and what makes the go well, what makes them easier to control, or how to manage it in any condition, fast or slow. What does work best is to sell people slow boats that look fast.
If you want to make money, sell sexy looking boats that are incapable of scaring them. The group I was with made enough money to stay afloat for almost a decade but our problem was that we refused to sell slow boats. I am glad we never did.
Why not a foiling A-Cat or something else like that? Several reasons but I'll stick to the most important one. On the Chesapeake Bay, really most of the east coast United States from Connecticut to Georgia, you would be in displacement mode more often than not. Years ago while doing research to help the OA decide when to hold a North Americans for 505's, Bucc18's, J22's, in three different locations I pulled 20 years of NOAA data each time from relevant NOAA wind instruments with historical readings. After dumping that into a database and teasing out ranges for the expected hours of the day the event would occur I found that between June-August the wind is below 5kts on average. Expanding that range from April to October it is just below 7kts. It's is better if you include evening hours but that wasn't relevant to the events. I ws curious so I began pulling data from travel sites I had raced at and a pattern developed in the mid-southern US Atlantic coast, light breezes during expected race hours. Not very good for foilers or any boat that demands breeze to perform well. Hence my focus on powered up boats. Better to pick an over powered boat and sit on shore when it blows 25kts+ a few times a year than be in a boat that is struggling to hit hull speed most days of the year.
I used to help sell boats and what I learned is that fast catches most peoples eye. Take them out on a fast boat and manage it well for them and they get hooked, some even buy one. The problem is that most people cannot handle fast and a powered up boat will scare them and the sales pitch is over. Most people have very little understanding about boats and what makes the go well, what makes them easier to control, or how to manage it in any condition, fast or slow. What does work best is to sell people slow boats that look fast.
If you want to make money, sell sexy looking boats that are incapable of scaring them. The group I was with made enough money to stay afloat for almost a decade but our problem was that we refused to sell slow boats. I am glad we never did.
spankoka
Super Anarchist
Every OD class that thrives has its own niche. At my club-the guys who are very competitive are in the F-18 class. The 505 guys have another club-but I am sure they are good. Cats are not my thing, but I can see that the F-18 folks like their thing. Their after race ragchewing is taken up with F-18 tuning and rigging-that's what they like.
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[email protected]
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what do you mean exactly by "can't handle it"? the boat is heavy and well-built, and not particularly fast...
We had a 59er and it was a great boat, but possibly too far ahead of it's time. Pretty unstable at rest compared to other boats in the same 2 person, hiking asymmetric niche and not a boat to lounge around in easily. Perhaps when the current 29er kids who have grown up messing around in boats like 29ers get older and want a hiker that reminds them of their youth, it's time will come again. I do hope so.
JimC
Not actually an anarchist.
You realise the early 29er sailors are well into their 40s now? When the 29er came out I predicted a new golden age of high performance sailing when loads of well trained kids with all the skills would graduate to the adult classes. Hasn't happened. The adult high performance classes are even weaker than they were then.
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Interesting thread over in DA that touches on many of these issues.
forums.sailinganarchy.com
US Portsmouth v2
USS tossed all US dinghy sailing to RYA. So far no one in the US seems to be using the RYA PY system for various reasons. Anyone tired of this enough to consider reviving the D-PN, call it US-PN, and start accepting numbers to caclulate ratings over time? Painful, but with the US still using...
forums.sailinganarchy.com
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As the game shrinks, do does our volunteer pool. therefore, combing what was previous one design events to invite several one-designs (scored separately), plus an open class scored using a rating rule seems like a reasonable approach...
Tcat gets it:
Tcat gets it:
While all that is completely true, it makes me feel very old since I was in the first race the 29er prototype ever did! :-(
Sometimes it seems that in that last hour, millions of years into the future when the sun goes nova and the last bit of oxygen is boiling off the blasted blistered surface of planet earth, the final cry of humanity ever to be heard will be someone saying "soon everyone will get into skiffs (or foilers, cats, etc)".
It's a theme that will never die no matter how reality proves it to be wrong. As you know, skiffs and cats have been around now for about 135 years now but we still hear the cry some day soon, their time will come......
The M15, on the other hand, seems to show that a practical modern boat can succeed very nicely, which is wonderful to see.
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