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Chris 249 said..

ferguscharles said..

A new, improved design would regenerate interest in the sport, increasing numbers. Therefor increasing the opportunities athletes have. A new design should incorporate what modern windsurfing is "fast, fun, enjoyable"

They were wrong then, why would they be right now?
The RSX REDUCED interest in Olympic class windsurfing, for example.

The RSX also claimed to be faster than the older IMCO, but that was because they ignored light winds when the IMCO was faster. Most "modern windsurfing" is slow in the conditions many club fleets sail in - should the new design reflect that? Probably not, but the point is that the question is really damn complicated and we can't assume that a "modern board" would increase numbers, or that modern windsurfing is fun and fast in the conditions a popular or Olympic board is sailed in. The Olympics basically kill any class in terms of local popularity - even the Laser has lost the vast majority of the 20-40 year olds. It's now full of kids and old people because the 25 year olds know that they have no chance against the Olympians so they don't bother.

If people are not going to move out of Lasers or 420s into a RSX, despite the fact that the RSX is miles faster a lot of the time, why would they move out of a Laser or 420 into a "modern" board that is even faster in a breeze but even slower in light winds? The RSX is about 20% quicker than a 420 overall, the IMCO was about 24% quicker. Why would people move into a board that was (say) 30% quicker when they didn't move into boards that were 20-24% quicker? Obviously speed in a breeze isn't attracting people or else the boards and cats would already be the most popular Olympic and Youth classes, instead of the least popular classes.

PS - what is "modern windsurfing" anyway? Don't Starboard and Naish say that windsups are their top selling boards? Doesn't that perhaps mean that "modern windsurfers" are windSUPs? If they are new designs that sell better than anything else, don't they have a right to be called "modern"?????????????

hey Chris, with respect,

You are correct to an extent.
However when the RS:X came out in the dark ages to replace its t.rex mistral friend as it was going extinct, numbers resurfaced, youth opportunity became stronger than ever before. The Youth sailing team was being filled up and things were looking good, maybe not as promising as before, but windsurfing in general was losing bit of interest. The boards for that period was going away from slow one designs and be becoming shorter, wider with lager sails than ever before, cambers even, and when the rs:x came out it was an excellent piece of gear and still is. it is proven to destroy the mistral in most conditions. But by todays means with boards carbon or wood or, light and faster still than the rs:x needs a lift, not just to make it slightly better but to try to get the ball rolling again.

Well the thing is modern windsurfing has a wind minimum, look at salmon 15+- knots, formula is 8-+. Nobody wants to sails non-planning, nobody. the designers of this "convertible" are trying to rid of this non planning sailing which is awesome. It makes it more fun swell as more interesting to watch. The foil is most likely not the best medium to do so but I like the concept. Modern windsurfing is going to be planning, maybe it is time a 6 knot wind minimum comes in just for the future windsurfing class? Non-planning sailing adds to the issue of prime weight as well, drastically reducing anyone over 70kgs hopes of an olympic career. I am sure the foiling would not work at all and further the current weight problems, but it is a step in the right direction. New is better and nobody is going to argue against that.

Lastly, every kid at my sailing club wants a windsurfing, even the 49ers. Problems lies within the fact that there is no real coaching, no numbers due to an outdated class, it is expensive. Get a few numbers back in due to a new class and the kids might start joining in. like what was happening in hobart a few years back. We had the strongest fleet in aus for a while. Cats are exploding in popularity, they are expensive though and have limited appeal to youth over a 49er, still a fantastic class.

Modern is now, not 20 years ago. It is what is relevant for today. Windsups are cool, in and it wouldn't surprise me if Naish sell more of those as they are easy and affordable. My mate just bought one and the date on it reads "5/7/2015" so yes that is quiet modern. Not really sure how this relates at all to the race board concept though.

yes windsups are cool.
our gear 30 years ago was similar to a large windsup and we could sail all day, any day with one sail and we did.
windsurfing was huge.

maybe the Olympics is bad for windsurfing.
there were 30,000 IMCO's before the Olympics selected the class, then again, windsurfing was huge.

maybe steering kids towards Olympic/AYF windsurfing is not the way to go.
in two sports i have participated, i have seen that most (if not all) with Olympic aspirations soon quit the sport whether they succeed or not.

Well, I was there when the RSX came in, and in NSW the youth numbers actually dropped. In fact I think the biggest youth fleet seen in Oz for years was actually the 15-16 the Wallies were getting in NSW after the RSX had come out. I know things were different at RQYS, where people have been doing a great job in building up the fleet, but RQ is not representative of what is happening everywhere.

In lots of racing down here, against sailors like the national Olympic squad, the RSX proved slower. For a while we had an official handicap for interclub racing in NSW that rated the RSX as about 5% slower than the Raceboards. Obviously in medium winds and open water the RSX is faster but in NSW, for instance, the kids didn't want to race RSX or Techno because they were too slow against the Raceboards, so our numbers fell. In the conditions you get at RQ the RSX may be faster (although when I looked at results a while ago it seemed the Raceboards were winning) but those conditions are not all that common.

New isn't better in terms of building up strong sailing fleets. The Laser is not new and it has huge fleets. The Opti is not new and it has even bigger fleets. The Nacra is new and it gets tiny fleets. Cats are not exploding in popularity, there is just hype claiming that they are. Check out the number of entries in national titles.

Oh, by the way, "today's boards" have used carbon since 1982, and we had the same discussion over whether windsurfing was all about planing or not in 1985 and even before. The idea that "windsurfing is planing" is actually getting close to 35 years old now, so it's not exactly a "modern" concept in any way. And the newest major raceboard class, at least for adults, is the Kona. So what is growing now in sailing, and in windsurfing, seems to be the cheaper, simpler stuff, even if it's slower.

As I said earlier, my ideal Olympic setup would include one shortboard so I'm not against "planing windsurfing". The issue is that we have lots of proof that newer kit isn't necessarily more popular, that faster kit is definitely not more popular for racing, and that modern windsurfing isn't really going just towards planing.

Foiling craft, be they boats, cats or boards are fast- within their window of operation. The biggest problem is that while fast is fun, the concentration/ focus/ skill level required to keep them going in their window of performance is so intense, I don't believe, despite the speed once foiling, that the sailors actually are able to really enjoy the experience. And that is the essence of the foiling dilemma. So damn difficult to sail and so hard to keep on the knife edge all the time to be able to complete a race. As far as olympics are concerned, start sticking minimum wind limits on the regatta and you will completely wipe out Olympic windsurfing because the idea of having to abandon a race because the wind drops below a certain minimum or alternatively, that the race can not even be started because the wind has not come in will go over really well with event organisers- so over the 10 days of Olympics what goes if they get 2 only 1 or 2 days of minimum wind?

Foiling is just too hard.

Perhaps bat wing Phantoms with a 9.5 are the answer.

yes, and even better if the new 2017 299/compact 377 is as good as they say.
would be a lot easier to travel with.

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handyman0708 said...
Perhaps bat wing Phantoms with a 9.5 are the answer.

Personal considerations aside, I think this is the most sensible and strongest option at the moment. Proven, current, all wind strength.
Include two weight divisions and you pretty much double the spread of people that can be competitive.

I would back it for sure.

Times are changing and so is technology. If foils are the way to go to make it faster and more fun to watch let's go with it. Who would have thought the one design of the past would be included and fun to watch? I don't really know if there is a group lobbying for which type would be represented in the Olympics. For me as long as there is a sail and board and popular for the general public then that's it. Hoping I can get to see the next windsurfing comp because it was rigged with gps' and the camera views from the commentators were first class it made it very interesting to watch

and that could be the problem, the olympic and tv people are only interested in what is cool to watch for a few minutes every four years.

... and the swimmers can start wearing fins and webbed gloves. That would be faster and fun to watch.

Perhaps another option could be to go down the path of not being a one design, board specific class. Mountain bike and BMX along with road cycling are allowed to use gear from different manufacturers so long as they meet certain parameters to classify them as fitting the category. So- Olympics- ANY one board from any manufacturer and any 2 sails declared at the start of the comp, no minimum wind limit and let those competing decide what they will race. So long as the sail is fixed to the deck with some form of flexible pivot joint- it is a windsurfer. SUP, Raceboard, Formula, Speed, Slalom- whatever?

Good on NP for developing a windsurfing class that has half a chance of competing with kite foiling for an Olympic spot. To me this has no real bearing on the success and future of windsurfing as a whole. A modern design is important, but the key to a successful class is a sharing and caring fun group of people. When we windsurfed in the 80's there was a different attitude. Many sailors didn't come from a sailing background, so cared little for rules and regulations. We just all got in there and had a go and it was fun. The same was the key in Moths.

Personally if I was a passionate 20 year old sailor up for a new challenge I would be looking at foiling with either a kite or windsurf rig.
Hausey's rich kid comment is so true but it's about priorities and I love seeing young kids with a passion. I don't care what it is.

maybe that's what NeilPryde are thinking and their proposal can bring together RSX, Formula, Kites, Moths and others.

Actually, thinking about this a little further- the one board/ any board concept could be applied to create a very interesting series of events to determine the Olympic champion- different format courses where one particular type of board may not be superior in every event- then one board only might be very good in one discipline but be terrible at another- i.e. flat water racing conventional course, racing where waves or swell might be present, slalom type off the wind racing, very close slalom where lots of tight turns short legs and manoeuvrability are important (something like the old wally one design could even do well here). That way it mixes it up far more and opens the sport up to a much wider scope of sailors.

It's a great idea in some ways, but the richer nations would be able to turn up with a complete quiver of hugely expensive specialist gear to every regatta, along with meteorologists to tell the sailors which gear to register. That means that sailors without megabucks, and the smaller and poorer nations who keep windsurfing in the Games, would be out of luck.

In 2000 the Brits, for example, decided to build a new mast for their 11' Europe dinghy. Instead of sticking two bits of alloy together to make the mandrel, they bought a complete 20' long solid tonne of alloy and carved it all away to make a mandrel about 4" wide. About 992kg of alloy was chucked away and I think 3d milling machines used, to carve the huge block of alloy into the perfect mandrel without a join. They then laid carbon up precisely on the mandrel, cooked it (IIRC) in a high temperature autoclave, and sanded it back from the inside. Each mast cost about 4 times as much as a complete Laser, and I think that was in material costs alone.

That sort of spending lead the smaller nations to shove the Europe out of the Games and bring in the Laser Radial. Multiply that effort over a quiver of boards and sails that would run from a 14' long round-bottomed "Dart" down to a course board, each with its own set of rigs, and how much cash are you looking at? If the Brits replicated their 2000 Europe effort they would probably spend about $80,000 (in 2000 values, maybe $300k today) just in mandrels alone. The poorer nations would get rid of windsurfing quick smart.

If you only allow one board to be used with a big variety of designs, then the Gold can easily just go to the sailor who had the best luck on the day. Imagine if the sailor who never made it into the top 20 at a regatta turned up, registered a Lechner when everyone else registered course slalom boards, and the wind forecast turned out to be wrong so the Lechner was the only board to register a finish each race? Would that be a good advertisement for the sport?

The road and track bikes have open suppliers, but the rules are actually really tight. The tubes on the bikes, for example, are quite restricted in shape - there's a limit on their aspect ratio and they have to be within something like 25mm of being straight. The rules mean that the Olympic road and track bikes are comparatively slow, but comparatively cheap. Hell, even the cyclists' SOCKS are subject to rules, to stop a money war breaking out over compression clothing.

In other sports, like skiing, the rules are also pretty tight, and the gear that is used has to be passed by the international body after a battery of measurements and checks.

I like the concept

Hmmm.... so was out on my 10m and Free Formula yesterday getting buzzed and no hopes of keeping with 2 guys on kites and foil boards, same goes with the moth guys! Just ain't fun not being top fish on the water these days, I was just keeping tabs with one guy going deep off the wind.

Might have to semi retire the big gear and get a kite foil! Looks weird as hell watching guys racing along on next to nothing! We'll see what the plan is in the next few months, a secondhand foil board is available locally.......

If I had my way the Olympics would have.... ... a one board, two sail combination. A one design longboard with a balanced design focus between strong and light winds. And.... two weight divisions, Heavy and light. Sharing the same course but entirely separate.

I would say the opposite - one sail and two boards (sup/longboard and 85cm wide slalom type with a 8- 9m sail and a paddle).
0-6 knots sup
6-12 knots longboard oly triangle
12-20 Slalom or triangle
20+ upwind/downwind

Usable in all conditions (which would actually increase participation #'s especially for kids)

PS - I like the foil concept - make it retractable and for lighter wind!

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joe87879 said..
If I had my way the Olympics would have.... ... a one board, two sail combination. A one design longboard with a balanced design focus between strong and light winds. And.... two weight divisions, Heavy and light. Sharing the same course but entirely separate.

I would say the opposite - one sail and two boards (sup/longboard and 85cm wide slalom type with a 8- 9m sail and a paddle).
0-6 knots sup
6-12 knots longboard oly triangle
12-20 Slalom or triangle
20+ upwind/downwind

Usable in all conditions (which would actually increase participation #'s especially for kids)

PS - I like the foil concept - make it retractable and for lighter wind!

I think there are 10000 active kids in Techno class now, pretty good participation. Not so good in Australia

Just my opinion... Racing, Olympics or otherwise, should be about racing, not so much speed. If the board sailed at the Olympics was affordable, say all-up inside $2000, can you imagine how many non-sailing people would give it a go. Like a windsurfing version of the Laser.
Maybe it's just the nostalgia kicking in.

Laser, Optimist and BIC techno's are the 3 biggest sailing classes in the world.
None are glamorous or fast, but try and win a world title, actually try and win a club race....

Foiling is hot right now and rightly so, but it is just another aspect of the sport.
I'm not sure foiling on a windsurfer is quite the same thing as for Kites or Cats. Just physics, but happy to be proven wrong.

Yacht clubs and schools adopting windsurfing is the key to the growth in youth participation.
Optimist programs are booming and windsurfing is the WIN/WIN for clubs and kids to continue to thrive.
WOD, Raceboards and BIC's are ideal classes for yacht clubs.

RQ has proved that the model works. I'm pretty sure there is a yacht club down the road from most of us that would love to jump on the bandwagon.

One of the guys on the sailing committee at RQ was telling on the weekend that the opti racks were now full, that's 50 private boats stored at the club and getting raced every week in club racing. In the same conversation he told me they put through over 1000 kids this season in the tackers program.

In the Learn to windsurf program we probably coached 20 or 30 different kids this season and we have three new kids that have bought gear and are racing weekly. Next season we will be better equipped and better organised and will train more kids and increase the numbers who take it up as a sport.

To me there is the solution for Olympic, Formula, Raceboard, Slalom, Freestyle, Wave or just plain recreational windsurfing numbers. Its not gear related or wind related or TV viewers related or any of that. Its just about providing an opportunity for kids to try the sport and then encouraging as many as possible to give it a try. A percentage will stick the rest will move on to some other activity.

Maybe not for the Olympics but I wonder how long until there is a (maybe partly) inflatable windsurfer one design class? Could have a 3 piece mast and telescopic like boom. The back of the board with fin and centreboard could be rigid and the rest mostly inflatable. Doesn't matter if it's fast or slow just that everyone is on the same gear.

There is of course the critical mass issue as well.... Not intending to abuse anyone's choices however, people tend to be sheep. And rightly so in this case. Bigger fleets are more fun.

Just simply being seen in numbers is probably the best promotion a sport will ever have. How to get over the hump and up to critical mass I have no idea! Especially when our sport has already seen a heyday like few others.

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fjdoug said..

yes, and even better if the new 2017 299/compact 377 is as good as they say.
would be a lot easier to travel with.

Are these little stubbies intended to rival, or at least compete with, the full length raceboards? Or are they a kind of Hybrid thing off on their own?

not sure salty. there is a little info leaked to the web.
Remi the designer and Juha; a very good heavyweight racer in Europe, say it is as good as a 377 in 8 knots and better than in 10.