Should the Crews Union be concerned?

[dunedin]

So it looks like the RORC overall season points championship has been dominated by two-handed boats - Gold and Bronze in the IRC Overall championship.
Amazing results from these double handers. So are the 8-12 extra bodies on the fully crewed boats now just extra weight and cost ?

 

[flaming]

So it looks like the RORC overall season points championship has been dominated by two-handed boats - Gold and Bronze in the IRC Overall championship.
Amazing results from these double handers. So are the 8-12 extra bodies on the fully crewed boats now just extra weight and cost ?

There's a certain skew in the overall results due to number of races taken part in.

However, there's no doubt at all that there is a huge swing towards shorthanded sailing going on. Which is great if you have a suitable boat and are interested in that sort of racing. But not so great if you're just starting out in racing and trying to get rides.

On a personal level what is far more worrying is that where in the past the DH boats would also do a few fully crewed inshore regattas for fun, this just isn't happening. There are 9 Sunfast 3300s in HYS, not one of them has come out for any inshore event this season. Whilst there is an element of the owners not being interested in inshore, and prioritising DH offshore, it's also true that no SF3300 has ever done even slightly well inshore.

When these are basically the only boats actually selling in anything like the rating bracket, that becomes seriously concerning for the viability of inshore racing.

We were out this weekend, with no offshore racing happening there were probably a dozen boats on the hard in HYS alone that would have been in our rating band. Plenty more in the other Hamble marinas. 3 boats came to the line....

We do some DH each year, because we enjoy it and it makes a change. But suggesting to the DH gang that they might also enjoy a weekend of round the cans lands on entirely deaf ears....

 

[michael_w]

Perhaps they've got another boat more suitable for round the cans stuff? I've raced DH offshore, but for inshore stuff I much prefer my Flying Fifteen.

 

[dunedin]

There's a certain skew in the overall results due to number of races taken part in.

Which perhaps also tells a story - easier to get two people on the start line regularly than 10 or 12?

Regarding the inshore racing, not sure what HYS is, and what type of inshore racing you do, but I can see that windward leeward type racing can be fun in an RS200, 49er or J70, it can also be dull in many bigger yachts.
As Michael W suggests, perhaps they go sailing in something different for inshore racing, or perhaps when doing so many RORC events they need to spend some weekend time with family or at work?

 

[flaming]

HYS is Hamble Yacht Services, the biggest drysail yard in Hamble.

What people decide they want to do in their boats is of course completely up to them, and I completely get the attraction of DH racing. As I've said, I do some, and enjoy it.

What has changed though is that in the past the boats doing the DH stuff were not specialist DH designs, so were also being used for other purposes, and the same boats would do the DH series one weekend and then a fully crewed regatta the next. That isn't happening any more. Which came first - the specialist DH boats, or the complete focus on DH by most of the crews is another discussion!

There are 42 boats on the results list for the UKDH Offshore series this year. Of which 3 have sailed any crewed inshore this year that I'm aware of. Those 3 are a J109, A HOD35 and Mjungu! A JPK1080, which must be about the most utilized boat on the solent....
None of the 3300s or 3200s have done any.

I don't particularly blame them, they have their boat for their purpose and that's absolutely fine. It does make me worry about the future of crewed inshore though. And whatever people say, crewed inshore is the route into the sport for most people, and certainly for almost anyone who cannot afford their own boat.

What's even more concerning is that the only boat that rates less than about 1.050 you can even buy new today that makes any pretence to be suitable for inshore crewed racing is the J99. That's it. Every other race orientated boat that is available to buy new is a DH design, or a megabucks Cape31.... That's really worrying for the future.

For me at least the attraction of ww/lw racing on a yacht is the crew work and crew dynamic. I've sailed smaller things, and whilst it's sailing and therefore great, I just prefer the challenge of getting 8 or 9 people to come together. And I also love that you can slot people who are completely new to the sport into the crew and still expect to be able to compete. You can't do that in smaller boats, or sailing DH.

 

[Birdseye]

This sort of racing is outside my experience but in the racing that I do, getting a crew together is often an issue and even more so when for effectiveness you want the same crew all the time. Is it not just eadier to do DH racing, Flaming?

 

[B27]

Most people who want to do short races can get that locally for much less money in a dinghy or a dayboat.

To do well at inshore racing fully crewed seems to be comically expensive, even for a medium sized boat.
Whereas there are a lot of people doing solo and 2H stuff on small budgets, and it has an appeal for people who want to go out of sight of land, people get a lot out of just finishing (or even just taking part) which you don't get from coming in the bottom third of a Solent RTC fleet.

I think there are less people about who can afford to run a 40ft boat in the Solent compared to 25 years ago, and those who can afford it are less likely to want to. I think critical mass is a problem, you look at a fleet and ask yourself 'Who are the people there I want to race against?' and count them on one hand.

Also I think the windward/leeward and asy kites phenomenon has bred a culture of short races and specialised boats, just as it has in dinghies. W/L racers don't want to do triangles any more, they just might reach out to where the gybe mark would have been. We have this in dinghies and it doesn't work well for mixed handicap races.

Lots of us had a go at yachts, now we've gone back to racing dinghies. Some of us are drawn to the offshore stuff because it's something you can't get from a dinghy, dayboat or sportsboat

And Sportsboats? Where have all the SB20 sailors gone? How many of them progressed to bigger boats, how many went back to dinghies , how many left the sport?

I think amateur big boat racing is a bit of a mess.

 

[Minerva]

Can’t help but draw a similar conclusion. I think there’s a slightly different factor at play too - speaking as a 40yr old bloke, it was quite the norm for my dad to go off and play with his mates at the weekend leaving my mum at home. This seemed to be the norm and replicated throughout the last club I was active at; the men went out to play and the wife’s stayed at home and caught up on the housework…

However very few of my network seem do similar these days. I’ve personally moved from racing into cruising; specifically as I can do it with my wife and family.

Looking across most of the blokes I know of a similar age; most have tended towards pastimes that they can do as a couple / family. Not necessarily a bad thing overall but trying to get 10blokes to commit to racing every Sat will likely be a rather tall order!

 

[flaming]

Most people who want to do short races can get that locally for much less money in a dinghy or a dayboat.

To do well at inshore racing fully crewed seems to be comically expensive, even for a medium sized boat.
Whereas there are a lot of people doing solo and 2H stuff on small budgets, and it has an appeal for people who want to go out of sight of land, people get a lot out of just finishing (or even just taking part) which you don't get from coming in the bottom third of a Solent RTC fleet.

I think there are less people about who can afford to run a 40ft boat in the Solent compared to 25 years ago, and those who can afford it are less likely to want to. I think critical mass is a problem, you look at a fleet and ask yourself 'Who are the people there I want to race against?' and count them on one hand.

Also I think the windward/leeward and asy kites phenomenon has bred a culture of short races and specialised boats, just as it has in dinghies. W/L racers don't want to do triangles any more, they just might reach out to where the gybe mark would have been. We have this in dinghies and it doesn't work well for mixed handicap races.

Lots of us had a go at yachts, now we've gone back to racing dinghies. Some of us are drawn to the offshore stuff because it's something you can't get from a dinghy, dayboat or sportsboat

And Sportsboats? Where have all the SB20 sailors gone? How many of them progressed to bigger boats, how many went back to dinghies , how many left the sport?

I think amateur big boat racing is a bit of a mess.

Actually right now I think being competitive in the DH offshore series would cost me more than being competitive in the inshore racing. For starters we’d need to get to cat 3, which is not trivial, and then we’d be up against brand new 3300s in their favoured environment… I’m pretty sure that to be as close to the front of that fleet as we are to the inshore fleet would need a new autopilot, at least 2 new specialist offshore sails (a furling code and an A1), a full expedition setup (and a new laptop to boot) and I’m probably short a few things. Ongoing costs would be pretty similar, probably a bit more on repairs when going offshore, and might have to pay for a few more of the little jobs to get done without the crew to muck in.

Critical mass is absolutely the point here. And that’s what’s got me worried when the historic situation of good numbers of boats doing both inshore and offshore has pretty much stopped.

One thing is for sure, I’m fairly convinced that the days of just buying a boat and entering races has gone. Those of us who want to sail in big inshore fleets are going to have to build them ourselves.

 

[Birdseye]

linky The attached link rather supports your thoughts Flaming

 

[dunedin]

linky The attached link rather supports your thoughts Flaming

This supports the hypothesis in post #1. Not sure how it helps with Flaming’s concerns?

 

[B27]

linky The attached link rather supports your thoughts Flaming

Once you've got a boat which doesn't rely on being weighed down by a lot of porkers to power it, you only need a big team if you want to turn corners quickly.
If you want to go around a mark every 5 minutes, you can get that sailing a dinghy on a lake.

It's all about rule sets and the rating system. You could change the ratings so you needed more fat to go fast in a straight line. Do we really want that?
If you look at the Americas Cup rule set, it looks to me like they've deliberately built a concept that keeps lots of bodies employed winding foils up and down, to replace all the old school faffing with poles and kites. Is that the pinnacle of our sport, or just a circus?
If there were no rules, races would be won by multihulls and foiling sailboards, but these things don't give the racing that sailors actually want. We tread in a minefield between developing performance and the qualities of tactical racing that you get from X Boats, Dragons, GP14 dinghies and other bits of history.

Personally, once a race is longer than about an hour, maybe two hours, I reckon three people is the optimum.
That's never been a category AFAIK?, it's solo, 2H or full fat.
I think 2H could be good for the sport. Why on earth should it need 8 people to sail a 40ft boat?

 

[Mark-1]

If you want to go around a mark every 5 minutes, you can get that sailing a dinghy on a lake.

FWIW in my "big boat" racing days the vast majority of crew in my little circle only did the round the cans races to get their faces known so they'd get offered the offshore races. Certainly that was the only reason I did it.

I'm not even sure two handed is short handed these days. My GF and I chartered a Bav 42 in the Baltic and it didn't occur to us that we were "short-handed" and I'm sure there are plenty of elderly couples sailing similar boats. 50 years ago things were different because the boats were different.

Should crew be concerned about DH racing? Maybe, but if there's less big boat sailing for crew that's probably compensated for by the fact that dinghy sailing has never required less maintainance and commitment; chartering is more available than ever; 20 foot weekend boats are literally being given away and then there's wing foiling. Plus there are a vast amount of non Sailing pastimes now. I also suspect that decent crew who turn up and are easy to get on with will always get crewing places and it's unreliable/crap/difficult people who will drop off.

 

[ridgy]

I think 2H could be good for the sport. Why on earth should it need 8 people to sail a 40ft boat?

I think we're concentrating too much on the mechanics of sailing. The camaraderie and social (ie boozing) aspects are as much a part of fully crewed racing as the sailing. A shame for this to be lost. I'm sure many on here have great memories of that sort of thing, I certainly do.

 

[B27]

I think we're concentrating too much on the mechanics of sailing. The camaraderie and social (ie boozing) aspects are as much a part of fully crewed racing as the sailing. A shame for this to be lost. I'm sure many on here have great memories of that sort of thing, I certainly do.

Personally, I never found the social side of big crews to be as good as the social side of a fleet of 2 person boats or club full of PY racers. Although to be honest, it's a long time since I was in the position of being one of a big crew where I only knew the people in my own crew. Living on the coast, typically if I sail in a crew of 6, I know people on a fair few of the other boats and have quite likely sailed with several of them, or raced dinghies against them. I guess its different for people who come down from 'inland' as a team?

 

[ckris]

Can’t help but draw a similar conclusion. I think there’s a slightly different factor at play too - speaking as a 40yr old bloke, it was quite the norm for my dad to go off and play with his mates at the weekend leaving my mum at home. This seemed to be the norm and replicated throughout the last club I was active at; the men went out to play and the wife’s stayed at home and caught up on the housework…

However very few of my network seem do similar these days. I’ve personally moved from racing into cruising; specifically as I can do it with my wife and family.

Looking across most of the blokes I know of a similar age; most have tended towards pastimes that they can do as a couple / family. Not necessarily a bad thing overall but trying to get 10blokes to commit to racing every Sat will likely be a rather tall order!

Appreciate the world was different when you were younger but today girls, couples and youngsters can be go yacht racing as well....?

 

[B27]

Appreciate the world was different when you were younger but today girls, couples and youngsters can be go yacht racing as well....?

I think when I was young, there were more female sailors.
Not many young people can afford their own 35ft racing yacht, so if they are not needed to sit on the side of a Sigma 38, they will have to do something else.

 

[ckris]

Personally, once a race is longer than about an hour, maybe two hours, I reckon three people is the optimum.
That's never been a category AFAIK?, it's solo, 2H or full fat.
I think 2H could be good for the sport. Why on earth should it need 8 people to sail a 40ft boat?

Very much what I have been thinking the last few years. It always used to be a binary choice on my boat to sail 2H or with 8/9 in RORC races because they used to have this weird rule that only 2H boats could use an autopilot, so you needed enough people to share the hand steering if sailing with more than 2. Now that quirky rule has gone I reckon 4 or 5 is the right balance for us between weight, space on board, being able to sail the boat well and be more sociable than maybe the 2H experience....but there is not (yet) a half crew class.

 

[flaming]

I think when I was young, there were more female sailors.

I doubt that to be honest. The increase in the number of female sailors in the racing fleets has been very noticeable, it's a very rare boat now that is all male. We are frequently 50:50. At Dartmouth this year we had only 2 blokes on board.

 

[flaming]

What is now interesting to me, is the entry list for the winter series/ autumn champs.

In the part of the rating split that I'm interested in - i.e about 1.000 to 1.030 there are already 17 boats entered for the autumn champs, and I know of others who have said they will be there. That will be by far and away the biggest fleet in that split that we've raced in this year (RTI aside). Looking at the list, I can only see 1 or two that we have yet to race at some point this year.

So in a way it seems to me that the challenge is less persuading people to sail inshore regattas, and more persuading people to sail the same inshore regattas.... As when we get to a quiet part of the season with nothing else on, the entry is large...