The return of the cruiser racer....?

[flaming]

I must just have encountered poorly sailed examples. Sometimes difficult to tell if it is the boat or crew.

Whilst there are some boats that a good crew just can't make look good, there is no boat that an average crew can't make look bad...

 

[dunedin]

The JPK seem to be by far the most successful series production racer with a feasible interior - just added the Middle Sea Race to an impressive track record.
Not sure anybody actually cruises them, but looks like could be feasible - though as ever an expensive way to get a boat to cruise in, and would need a lot of time and effort changing gear (literally) from race track to fast cruising

 

[Chris 249]

I certainly hope there's a return to cruiser/racers. They are always the basis of the sport and when they are competitive, numbers go up and more people sail.

I wonder if part of the reason there has been a lull in construction is that we have been reaching a period when it's actually hard to do a big improvement on older boats. Taking J/Boats own figures, there's a 3.3% improvement in speed between their first 36 cruiser/racer (designed 1980) and their latest. That's a pretty small increase over 37 years. Economical cruiser/racers are just bumping up against the fact that materials haven't greatly improved and therefore it's hard to create a real improvement on earlier designs. The obvious things, like adding a bigger rig and a bigger bulb, don't come cheap.

A few years ago a noted designer hopped aboard a friend's boat, which was an outstanding NZ design from about 1981. As the frustrated designer complained, you couldn't really design a cruiser/racer that was all that much better. Sure, you could add a bigger rig and perhaps twin rudders, and that all adds cost. He designed a boat of the same size and did all the usual things - bigger rig, bulb keel, longer waterline. It created a boat that was faster for overall length but slower for the cash.

I was lucky enough to get to ask Bruce Farr's partner Russell Bowler about what made the Benny 40.7 one of the most successful cruiser/racers of all time and why they didn't give it a bigger bulb. Russell told me that adding a bigger bulb would just have upped the design spiral - more stability = bigger winches = a more expensive mast = more expensive structure = a boat that goes marginally faster but costs disproportionately more. Lots of the Open-influenced cruiser/racers seem to suffer from that as far as I can see.

So since no magic wand exists, and you can't just add carbon and a more extreme keel as with flat-out racers, there could be an issue with developing new cruiser/racers that will sell as well as the old ones. That may mean that rulemakers have to increase age allowance for older cruiser/racers to keep them competitive, or see fleets die away.

Some people find cruiser/racers illogical. I see it the other way - pure racers go faster but if speed is what counts, then don't sail a mono. Cruiser/racers offer big fleets, great racing, excellent economy and lots of versatility. Sure, our cruiser/racers are slower than carbon racing monos but our Formula 18 cat is faster still.

 

[roblpm]

I certainly hope there's a return to cruiser/racers. They are always the basis of the sport and when they are competitive, numbers go up and more people sail.

I wonder if part of the reason there has been a lull in construction is that we have been reaching a period when it's actually hard to do a big improvement on older boats. Taking J/Boats own figures, there's a 3.3% improvement in speed between their first 36 cruiser/racer (designed 1980) and their latest. That's a pretty small increase over 37 years. Economical cruiser/racers are just bumping up against the fact that materials haven't greatly improved and therefore it's hard to create a real improvement on earlier designs. The obvious things, like adding a bigger rig and a bigger bulb, don't come cheap.

A few years ago a noted designer hopped aboard a friend's boat, which was an outstanding NZ design from about 1981. As the frustrated designer complained, you couldn't really design a cruiser/racer that was all that much better. Sure, you could add a bigger rig and perhaps twin rudders, and that all adds cost. He designed a boat of the same size and did all the usual things - bigger rig, bulb keel, longer waterline. It created a boat that was faster for overall length but slower for the cash.

I was lucky enough to get to ask Bruce Farr's partner Russell Bowler about what made the Benny 40.7 one of the most successful cruiser/racers of all time and why they didn't give it a bigger bulb. Russell told me that adding a bigger bulb would just have upped the design spiral - more stability = bigger winches = a more expensive mast = more expensive structure = a boat that goes marginally faster but costs disproportionately more. Lots of the Open-influenced cruiser/racers seem to suffer from that as far as I can see.

So since no magic wand exists, and you can't just add carbon and a more extreme keel as with flat-out racers, there could be an issue with developing new cruiser/racers that will sell as well as the old ones. That may mean that rulemakers have to increase age allowance for older cruiser/racers to keep them competitive, or see fleets die away.

Some people find cruiser/racers illogical. I see it the other way - pure racers go faster but if speed is what counts, then don't sail a mono. Cruiser/racers offer big fleets, great racing, excellent economy and lots of versatility. Sure, our cruiser/racers are slower than carbon racing monos but our Formula 18 cat is faster still.

It seems to me that less people are racing in slow boats and less people are cruising in small boats.

I recently posted about my next boat in say 5 years that should be the smallest possible to club race, passage race and do an Atlantic Circuit. There wasn't much encouragement. Apparently I need a 38 foot boat to cruise which would be far too expensive to race due to the fact I couldn't afford sails etc.

Flamings point is that he wants faster boats for the racing i think. I think there is already a growing split. The Js, New Elans, Corbys that make up division one at our club aren't really appealing cruising boats. There are no sigmas left racing here regularly. Then I race in a dwindling class of 30 year old smaller boats. Not much company in the 33 foot cruiser racer department.

 

[wotayottie]

I see a lack of realism here. A cruiser racer has to be a compromise, neither being as capable on the racetrack as a full out racer nor as useable as a pure cruiser out in the sticks. I can understand Flamings desire to see a cruiser racer that can compete full on, but its never going to happen. It will either fall short as a racer or fall short as a cruiser as the First range did.

If you dont like NHC handicap style racing, and many racers dont, then the answer to successful racing of cruisers has to be one design fleets as used to be the case with Sigmas and Hunters. With that approach, the extra weight and equipment required for comfortable cruising simply doesnt matter. Such cruising necessities as generators and windlasses and sprayhoods for example.

Meantime I cruise and race in NHC in a Starlight 35. Could I compete in IRC with the J boats etc - no I couldnt even if I were a good enough skipper. But I do both and I enjoy doing so.

 

[Chris 249]

I don't see a cruiser-racer as a poor compromise between racer and cruiser but as a separate breed that can race and cruise. It's difficult to define but not just semantics. Some people say you can't cruise a cruiser/racer but there are scores of them out there doing it, from family weekends to long-term global cruising. One example was Sunstone, which was a liveaboard home and won its class in the Fastnet seven times, was RORC Yacht of the Year four times and then went on a world cruise in which it won its class in the Hobart and won NZ's biggest race.

Why would the fact that a boat is slightly slower than a full-on racer mean you can't race it? An RS Aero, Laser or Solo is much slower than a Moth but plenty of people still race them. A Fast 40 racer is miles slower than an old Formula 40 multi but no one sits around complaining about the Fast 40's lack of speed - they simply see it in context and know that for a fixed-keel mono they are fast. Once we accept that boats have to be seen in context and judged against other comparable boats, a good cruiser/racer doesn't look at all slow. Cruiser/racers CAN compete full on; it's why they've won events like the Hobart.

Even if you feel that a cruiser/racer has to have a sprayhood and an anchor winch then with the correct rules it doesn't have to be a problem. You don't need to put the sprayhood up just because you have a nice layout down below and its weight will be measured by the rule.

Rob, you're right about the dwindling number of slower boats. That's part of what concerns me - as the typical boat gets bigger the costs ramp up and the sport becomes harder to get into. How many newcomers would go out and buy a Fast 40 if that's the only route into the sport? What's happening here in Australia is an example. We basically don't have the huge fleet of 33-39 foot X Yachts, J Boats, JPKs and Bennies you get in Europe and America, so the Hobart has gone from being about half the size of the Fastnet down to being 25% as big, despite a world-record economic boom and great population growth. Other races are suffering at least as much, because the big clubs just don't seem to give the slightest care to encouraging owners who don't have a boatload of pros and a new 40+ footer.

 

[flaming]

Flamings point is that he wants faster boats for the racing i think. I think there is already a growing split. The Js, New Elans, Corbys that make up division one at our club aren't really appealing cruising boats. There are no sigmas left racing here regularly. Then I race in a dwindling class of 30 year old smaller boats. Not much company in the 33 foot cruiser racer department.

Just for clarity, that's not my point. My point is that I want growing fleets and good racing. I don't really care if that is stripped out race boats or cruiser racers. My point is that RORC's current policy of penalising stripped out racers in smaller sizes and encouraging cruiser racers with their IRC rule is demonstrably not working as the major manufacturers of cruiser racers have stopped making them.

What is the point in the IRC rating encouraging cruiser racers if the only boats being built today with that rule in mind are not boats that people actually want to cruise? I don't think there is any argument that the current successful IRC designs in the 30-something foot bracket are the JPKs and the Sunfasts. They are not boats that are ever going to sell to people looking for a fast cruising boat. And I would argue that the new GS34 is much the same. Who's going to buy a cruising boat with an open forecabin?

So what is being made here is a racing boat that seems to be at least a ton heavier than it needs to be on the pretence that it's also going cruising to comply with the rating rule.

And for the record I don't think the blame for this situation is really anything to do with RORC. The problem, in my view, is that the cruising boats of today are so different, and so comfortable, that as soon as you are not going to race the cruiser racer looks small, uncomfortable and less desirable by comparison. And put simply, without the "fast cruiser" brigade to top up the racing sales then the CR models suddenly don't look very economic unless you really manage to get OD racing going and sell hundreds of boats.

And then the likes of POGO, and to a lesser extent Elan come along with their big, fat, fast cruising boats and say "look fast cruisers, this is what a fast cruising boat can be if you stop designing it to a rating rule that encourages upwind performance. And you guys don't like going upwind anyway." And that makes a ton of sense, because as fast cruising boats they are clearly far better suited than the First series etc.

 

[Ingwe]

The biggest factor for whether a dual purpose cruiser / racer makes sense to run is the weather where it is going to be kept. I would be more than happy running something like Grand Soleil in the Med as a dual purpose boat because you can almost guarantee good weather for a weeks cruise in the summer which means that you aren't as worried about having lots of creature comforts below deck because you aren't going to spend much time there.

In the UK though we appear to be getting progressively less settled summers and it isn't much fun being sat in a race orientated boat when it decides to rain for two days. We always take a week off to go cruising each summer normally in early July and in the past three years we have literally had three really nice days weather - and that isn't us just being unlucky because we have had the hottest day of the year in two of those three years whilst we have been off. So next year we are going to go back to running a sports boat and then charter for a couple of weeks abroad - we will get just as much racing in as we do now and get two almost guaranteed nice weeks cruising for about £5000 pa less than I am currently spending running a racer cruiser.

 

[Chris 249]

I dunno, I've been flicking from the Elan and Beneteau brochures/sites and can't actually see much advantage for the S4 over the First 35 or J/109 in terms of interior or specs; even the ancient Farr 11.6 looks similar. The Elan is lighter than the Beneteau but the same weight as the J and the Farr, which due to its rakish ends is longer overall but shorter on the waterline. The Elan has a wider stern and twin rudders but surely that will increase wetted surface and cost. The Elan looks more modern inside but may date quickly. And according to IRC the Elan is only about 2% quicker.

It's hard to see why the Elan is a much better cruiser than the First etc. The Pogo is so different it's hard to compare. And outside of Europe the Open style often seems to really struggle to perform well. Here in Australia most of them have been massive under-performers because they can stop dead in light winds in our typical ground swell and left-over chop.

So are the new boats actually that much better for cruising, and are they better as cruiser/racers considering the extra cost of the bigger rigs, dual rudders etc?

I agree about the issue of boats like the Sunfast, but perhaps rather than opening up more to racers, IRC should try to tip further towards cruiser/racers again? And maybe new boat sales is no longer the barometer of the success of a rule? If it's becoming harder to make big improvements in design (and I believe it is) then boatbuilders will just have to get used to slower sales, and is that a problem as long as the number of boats in the racing fleets keeps up?

Finally, couldn't the Sunfast style have the advantage of being more suitable for being fitted out in later life, and therefore becoming a cruiser/racer on the second- or third-hand market, which will increase its resale and therefore allow more owners to trade up? If the IRC encourages something like an Open or a baby TP52 instead then how much will they sell for second-hand, and how many owners in that size range can afford to get burned financially?

 

[flaming]

I dunno, I've been flicking from the Elan and Beneteau brochures/sites and can't actually see much advantage for the S4 over the First 35 or J/109 in terms of interior or specs; even the ancient Farr 11.6 looks similar. The Elan is lighter than the Beneteau but the same weight as the J and the Farr, which due to its rakish ends is longer overall but shorter on the waterline. The Elan has a wider stern and twin rudders but surely that will increase wetted surface and cost. The Elan looks more modern inside but may date quickly. And according to IRC the Elan is only about 2% quicker.

It's hard to see why the Elan is a much better cruiser than the First etc. The Pogo is so different it's hard to compare. And outside of Europe the Open style often seems to really struggle to perform well. Here in Australia most of them have been massive under-performers because they can stop dead in light winds in our typical ground swell and left-over chop.

So are the new boats actually that much better for cruising, and are they better as cruiser/racers considering the extra cost of the bigger rigs, dual rudders etc?

That's sort of my point! The bigger, wider, boats are relatively poor performers in the very light, and upwind. But they are conditions that most cruisers would be motoring in, or going somewhere else. Very few cruisers really use the best performance point of a typical IRC CR design, which is it's upwind performance. By contrast a fat arsed Elan will be considerably quicker on a reach across the channel than a First 35, and with that chine a lot flatter too. For sure if I was looking for a good performance cruiser for channel cruising, I would definitely favour the "Open" style boats over a more traditional CR.
Then if you look at the interior volume, you do get almost as much interior space in the Elan, or the POGO, as you do in the same sized AWB cruising boat. Not quite as much, but certainly more than a J109 or First 35 (for example) which are actually pretty cramped boats below decks.
Meanwhile, the Elan is an awful boat for racing under IRC. So people who buy them, and there do seems to be increasing numbers around, are not ever going to be tempted into racing.

I agree about the issue of boats like the Sunfast, but perhaps rather than opening up more to racers, IRC should try to tip further towards cruiser/racers again? And maybe new boat sales is no longer the barometer of the success of a rule? If it's becoming harder to make big improvements in design (and I believe it is) then boatbuilders will just have to get used to slower sales, and is that a problem as long as the number of boats in the racing fleets keeps up?

If there are not new boats being built, then the supply of second hand boats will dry up. And then game over. IRC has for a very long time openly stated that it favours CRs, and great boats such as the Mumm30 (of which there was a big fleet in the Solent once upon a time) were rated out of competitiveness. This is ok, when fleets are healthy and the racing is good. But fleets haven't been healthy for years, and the racing is suffering. What's that quote about doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results...?

Finally, couldn't the Sunfast style have the advantage of being more suitable for being fitted out in later life, and therefore becoming a cruiser/racer on the second- or third-hand market, which will increase its resale and therefore allow more owners to trade up? If the IRC encourages something like an Open or a baby TP52 instead then how much will they sell for second-hand, and how many owners in that size range can afford to get burned financially?

I'm not suggesting mini TPs. I'm just suggesting that if the only purpose of a boat is to race, then writing a rule that means it has to have all of the cruising bits to be competitive simply makes the boat more expensive, heavier and less fun to sail. Whilst making the owners carry all the cruising stuff around with them on the race course just means it gets trashed and reduces the resale value of their boat.

You have to wonder about a rule that allows people like us to put carbon sails, inhaulers, specialist racing tuff-luffs, uprated cordage and a whole host of other stuff that has an actual effect on how fast it goes on the boat with no rating penalty, but refuses to allow us to take things like the table and cabin doors off, when they are just getting in the way, without hitting us with a large penalty way over and above the weight change.
I fail to see how that encourages participation. By saying you can have all the go fast goodies without penalty you are saying that to be competitive you have to have them. So the average cruiser baulks at the cost. So we're not encouraging cruisers to race. Yet we're making racers sail boats with all the cruising goodies on board?

In my view IRC has to pick a direction. Are they really in the business of encouraging participation, in which case they need to find a way of rating things like sail cloth type and other go fast goodies to encourage people to try.
Or are they really about racing for racers. In which case lets stop pretending that racers also cruise their boats any more, they don't. So lets start allowing sailors to modify the interiors of their boats to better suit their needs, and allow designers to draw boats that are designed just to race that can be competitive under the predominant rating rule.

 

[wotayottie]

Got to agree with your analysis of what makes a boat fast but youb are back with your IRC blinkers on, Comments like " By saying you can have all the go fast goodies without penalty you are saying that to be competitive you have to have them. So the average cruiser baulks at the cost. So we're not encouraging cruisers to race. Yet we're making racers sail boats with all the cruising goodies on board " are nonsense. There are lots of cruisers racing. Way more than IRC rcaers racing. They do it under a different handicap system.

 

[flaming]

Got to agree with your analysis of what makes a boat fast but youb are back with your IRC blinkers on, Comments like " By saying you can have all the go fast goodies without penalty you are saying that to be competitive you have to have them. So the average cruiser baulks at the cost. So we're not encouraging cruisers to race. Yet we're making racers sail boats with all the cruising goodies on board " are nonsense. There are lots of cruisers racing. Way more than IRC rcaers racing. They do it under a different handicap system.

That is exactly my point.....!

RORC's policies with IRC have been to encourage cruisers to race under IRC, and they aren't working.

 

[wotayottie]

You are right there. NHC was designed with support from the RORC rating office with the idea that it would be a lead in to IRC. Doesnt seem to have worked well in that respect as in others.

Your comments about the extra weight of cruising facilities affecting boat performance in racing are right. But by the same token, IRC doesnt take into account racing equipment like carbon sails. So unless you kit out a cruising boat with racing kit, it isnt going to do any good under IRC. That costs, and people who take their racing seriously enough to be willing to spend as required will, I suspect, go for a racing boat in the first place.

Maybe its best justr to regard IRC as the serious racers handicap ystem suitable only for serious race boats and to regard NHC as what its name suggests, a National Handicap system for Cruisers. Mind you it needs a lot of work.

 

[flaming]

Your comments about the extra weight of cruising facilities affecting boat performance in racing are right. But by the same token, IRC doesnt take into account racing equipment like carbon sails. So unless you kit out a cruising boat with racing kit, it isnt going to do any good under IRC.

I'm glad we agree

That costs, and people who take their racing seriously enough to be willing to spend as required will, I suspect, go for a racing boat in the first place.

But they can't because race boats are not competitive under IRC until you get to the larger sizes.

 

[Greenheart]

Interesting reading gentlemen...although I don't race, so I don't understand a word of the handicap analysis.

Just one thought comes to my mind, maybe not closely related to the debate here...

...as a man of minimal financial resources, the most appealing part of brokerage-window shopping is how cheap everything old, is.

So as a keen sailor who likes all the speed he can get from a good boat (despite the fact I've no atom of interest in racing), and as a keen cruiser who likes to be comfortable, I am very tempted to buy both an early Laser SB3, and a Centaur with a wood-burning stove.

Would I ever consider one boat that attempted both fortés, and fell short in both departments? Never. Even if I could afford a brand new yacht, I'd far prefer to buy/berth/insure/maintain two old ones, each thoroughly accomplished at their different purposes.

 

[lpdsn]

... I am very tempted to buy both an early Laser SB3, and a Centaur with a wood-burning stove.

Would I ever consider one boat that attempted both fortés, and fell short in both departments? ...

Now I am faced with trying to get out of my head the picture of an SB3 with a wood burning stove.

 

[Greenheart]

...an SB3 with a wood burning stove.

Maybe a nice little boiler and piston, stern-wheel, jazz band, poker-floozies? Yeah, I could get into this racing thing. :encouragement:

 

[mrming]

I'm glad we agree



But they can't because race boats are not competitive under IRC until you get to the larger sizes.

So in summary:

The IRC rule is mostly used by serious racers who race their boat and don’t cruise it.

For some reason, at smaller sizes the rule disproportionately favours heavy boats. In practice this means cruiser racers like the Firsts or heavy racers like the Sun Fasts, JPKs and the heavier J boats like the 92, 105, 109, 112 etc.

There are also weird anomalies like ex IOR quarter and half tonners with modern foils, rigs and deck layouts, but let’s not get into that.

I would rather be sailing something which will plane in less than 20 knots of breeze. We’re only going round in heavy boats digging a hole in the water because that’s what the rule prefers.

Edit: but with a wood burning stove - obviously!

 

[dunedin]

So as a keen sailor who likes all the speed he can get from a good boat (despite the fact I've no atom of interest in racing), and as a keen cruiser who likes to be comfortable, I am very tempted to buy both an early Laser SB3, and a Centaur with a wood-burning stove..

Spot on. Rather than an unsatisfactory compromise quite a few experienced racers prefer something like a J70 for racing and a posh cruiser as mother ship/cruise platform. Probably cheaper and more fun than a single compromise boat (with two suits of sails, regular lifts etc)

Of course some do this with rather more style - such as Velsheda and Bystander. But the principle is sound.

 

[Chris 249]

That's sort of my point! The bigger, wider, boats are relatively poor performers in the very light, and upwind. But they are conditions that most cruisers would be motoring in, or going somewhere else. Very few cruisers really use the best performance point of a typical IRC CR design, which is it's upwind performance. By contrast a fat arsed Elan will be considerably quicker on a reach across the channel than a First 35, and with that chine a lot flatter too. For sure if I was looking for a good performance cruiser for channel cruising, I would definitely favour the "Open" style boats over a more traditional CR.
But the same slump in cruiser/racer sales seems to have occurred in areas where the "open" types have not taken off, such as the USA, NZ and Australia. Therefore it seems that the rise of the Open types is not the main issue.



Then if you look at the interior volume, you do get almost as much interior space in the Elan, or the POGO, as you do in the same sized AWB cruising boat. Not quite as much, but certainly more than a J109 or First 35 (for example) which are actually pretty cramped boats below decks.

Is the volume that much greater? I spent some time looking at interior arrangements and found it very hard to see that the space was actually significantly larger apart from in the stern, and wide sterns don't come without cost in wetted surface, a big rig to match, and often twin rudders with more added cost.
Meanwhile, the Elan is an awful boat for racing under IRC. So people who buy them, and there do seems to be increasing numbers around, are not ever going to be tempted into racing.

If there are not new boats being built, then the supply of second hand boats will dry up. And then game over. IRC has for a very long time openly stated that it favours CRs, and great boats such as the Mumm30 (of which there was a big fleet in the Solent once upon a time) were rated out of competitiveness. This is ok, when fleets are healthy and the racing is good. But fleets haven't been healthy for years, and the racing is suffering. What's that quote about doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results...?

Well, down here in Australia we have effectively done something different, which is to not get as many of the 36 foot cruiser/racers - and our fleets are far, far smaller than yours and than they were in the past. In the bigger boats, our fleets are about as large or even (in the maxis) much larger - but overall fleet size is way down.

Comparing to earlier eras, it seems that racing in the UK may have been at a bit of a high for some time, arguably due to the success of the mid-range cruiser/racers. Maybe it's a return to more normal levels? Personally I'm concerned about the lack of new people coming in because the costs for an 'entry level' boat these days are so high in every way.

I'm not suggesting mini TPs. I'm just suggesting that if the only purpose of a boat is to race, then writing a rule that means it has to have all of the cruising bits to be competitive simply makes the boat more expensive, heavier and less fun to sail. Whilst making the owners carry all the cruising stuff around with them on the race course just means it gets trashed and reduces the resale value of their boat.

Fully understand the issues, and the same thing occurred under IMS. Arguably, though, it's a matter where we have to choose between two evils. If you encourage racer/cruisers there are the issues you identify. If you encourage race machines, they lose resale value dramatically once outmoded so you get fewer owners buying replacement boats. Companies like J/Boats and Beneteaus worked hard to keep resale value up so their owners can trade up. Back in the days of IOR race machines, the resale value of outmoded boats was stupidly low - Seahorse reckoned on average they lost 60% in the first year or something on average. That would represent a much greater loss than buying a boat with an interior and selling it with a scratched interior.

You have to wonder about a rule that allows people like us to put carbon sails, inhaulers, specialist racing tuff-luffs, uprated cordage and a whole host of other stuff that has an actual effect on how fast it goes on the boat with no rating penalty, but refuses to allow us to take things like the table and cabin doors off, when they are just getting in the way, without hitting us with a large penalty way over and above the weight change.
I fail to see how that encourages participation. By saying you can have all the go fast goodies without penalty you are saying that to be competitive you have to have them. So the average cruiser baulks at the cost. So we're not encouraging cruisers to race. Yet we're making racers sail boats with all the cruising goodies on board?

In my view IRC has to pick a direction. Are they really in the business of encouraging participation, in which case they need to find a way of rating things like sail cloth type and other go fast goodies to encourage people to try.

Agree with that 1000%. I've been looking at getting back into racing with my mid-size cruiser/racer and to be fully competitive probably costs about as much as the average person earns in a year. It used to be that people who earned about 40% over the average could run a typical small offshore boat, and the person with the usual cruising set of sails had gear that was pretty similar to the racing set. Now there's a huge divergence and huge cost increase.

I would love to see IRC return to stricter sail number limits or bonuses for having fewer sails with more cruising orientation. It's a hard balancing act but it would be great to see more effort.


Or are they really about racing for racers. In which case lets stop pretending that racers also cruise their boats any more, they don't. So lets start allowing sailors to modify the interiors of their boats to better suit their needs, and allow designers to draw boats that are designed just to race that can be competitive under the predominant rating rule.

As noted above, in the past when racing machines have been favoured boats have lost value so quickly that new building slowed dramatically anyway. I've often thought a good workaround would be to allow people to remove things like tables as long as they put a little bit more weight on board, bolted down in an area that would prevent it being used to improve weight centralisation or as ballast.

It would be good to allow lighter boats to be competitive, and to require the heavier ones to have simple things like forward bulkheads if they are going to be rated as cruiser/racers.