The return of the cruiser racer....?

[TallBuoy]

I dunno, but maybe a first step could be for the rating office to admit that there is a problem...

To be fair, I think they realised that some years ago, as the boss at the time, Mike Irwin, helped the RYA put NHC together. That was on the basis that it would be a feeder to more boats into IRC, which was a bold move because it could have had the opposite effect. Five years later, there are no green shoots of recovery that I can see, because the Lymington IRC fleet gets smaller every year.

[PS As an aside, It was me who got Jenny on to this thread, as a personal friend]

 

[flaming]

To be fair, I think they realised that some years ago, as the boss at the time, Mike Irwin, helped the RYA put NHC together. That was on the basis that it would be a feeder to more boats into IRC, which was a bold move because it could have had the opposite effect. Five years later, there are no green shoots of recovery that I can see, because the Lymington IRC fleet gets smaller every year.

[PS As an aside, It was me who got Jenny on to this thread, as a personal friend]

Well thanks for getting Jen involved, always good to have info from the source!

The frustration I have is that RORCs answer to declining participation is to encourage more cruisers to race, which is fine and I agree with that aim. However... at the same time RORC don't do anything about the reasons that cruiser's don't race that are within their remit. For example whilst I fully understand (and agree with) the reasons for not rating the sail material, by not doing so you are putting a massive barrier in the way of cruisers wanting to try IRC racing. So whilst on the one hand we have policies designed to be cruiser friendly (e.g not removing tables, favouring heavier boats in smaller sizes) that annoy people who are already bought into the sport, but on the other hand we don't take those policies far enough to actually make enough of a difference to get more cruisers on the race course. As we all know that to be competitive you must have racing sails and lots of other go-fast goodies.

And in the meantime the average cruising boat these days is totally unsuited for racing, and the cruiser racer is (as discussed) dying out, so what are these new entrants to the sport supposed to be sailing?

It's just the "doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result" bit that I find frustrating.

I don't know if tweaking the IRC rule to allow a 35ish foot version of a Fast 40 to be competitive under IRC would be enough to rejuvenate the sport. But I do know that doing nothing is going to kill yacht racing in that size range.

 

[lw395]

Thats the core problem really - the absence of sensibly priced modern one design fleets. What you really need is a modern design Sigma 33 or Impala, but the racing market is pretty small so major manufacturers dont bother with it. There must be the thick end of 750 boats moored in Cardiff bay yet the fleet racing is maybe 30 at best. If those proportions are reflected elsewhere, you can see why makers like Bav pay lip service only to lower priced race boats

If people wanted to buy such boats to race, people would build them.

 

[Ingwe]

I don't know if tweaking the IRC rule to allow a 35ish foot version of a Fast 40 to be competitive under IRC would be enough to rejuvenate the sport. But I do know that doing nothing is going to kill yacht racing in that size range.

I think it would at least get a few boats being built again, the way to do it would be to keep heavily penalising carbon usage in the hull / spars in boats sub 40 foot to keep the costs under control but to stop penalising boats made from conventional materials that can plane, I am thinking something along the lines of a Far East 28R scaled up to 35 foot whilst keeping it fairly simple and cheap as opposed to a scaled up Farr 280 which would be back up to absurd money.

The biggest problem for the sport is that there is very little to encourage younger owners in, as things stand there are a lot of people who when they are younger go through the whole race training program in dinghy's and come out as very good sailor's most of them leave the sport entirely but a decent number stay in dinghies, as they get older they would probably progress onto sports boats, but then what, the last non planning boat they will have sailed will have been an Optimist when they were 11 years old, yes I am sure that some people if they could afford it might try to go from a J70 to a Fast 40 but there is a huge amount of learning to be done in campaign management, sail design and just getting the extra crew together that makes it too big a jump unless you have enough money to buy in the extra knowledge needed.

Unfortunately I agree with Flaming that nothing is likely to happen and the mid range of the sport will gradually be left to die because as things stand the sport is run by and for fairly old people, we had one of our local end of season meetings for the club to get feedback about the racing this year from the owner's / crews last week there were probably 25 people there, the average age was probably slightly north of 60 with only one person younger than me and I am 40 next year, of those present I would guess that at least half will have to have given up sailing within 10 years due to old age and there just aren't enough younger people coming through to replace them - I know there are also a whole load of other factors for this but we could at least try to give them boats that they might want to sail.

 

[lw395]

To be fair, I think they realised that some years ago, as the boss at the time, Mike Irwin, helped the RYA put NHC together. That was on the basis that it would be a feeder to more boats into IRC, which was a bold move because it could have had the opposite effect. Five years later, there are no green shoots of recovery that I can see, because the Lymington IRC fleet gets smaller every year.

[PS As an aside, It was me who got Jenny on to this thread, as a personal friend]

The rating system not mentioned, Portsmouth Yardstick, might be a better alternative than NHC?

 

[lw395]

I think it would at least get a few boats being built again, the way to do it would be to keep heavily penalising carbon usage in the hull / spars in boats sub 40 foot to keep the costs under control but to stop penalising boats made from conventional materials that can plane, I am thinking something along the lines of a Far East 28R scaled up to 35 foot whilst keeping it fairly simple and cheap as opposed to a scaled up Farr 280 which would be back up to absurd money.

The biggest problem for the sport is that there is very little to encourage younger owners in, as things stand there are a lot of people who when they are younger go through the whole race training program in dinghy's and come out as very good sailor's most of them leave the sport entirely but a decent number stay in dinghies, as they get older they would probably progress onto sports boats, but then what, the last non planning boat they will have sailed will have been an Optimist when they were 11 years old, yes I am sure that some people if they could afford it might try to go from a J70 to a Fast 40 but there is a huge amount of learning to be done in campaign management, sail design and just getting the extra crew together that makes it too big a jump unless you have enough money to buy in the extra knowledge needed.

Unfortunately I agree with Flaming that nothing is likely to happen and the mid range of the sport will gradually be left to die because as things stand the sport is run by and for fairly old people, we had one of our local end of season meetings for the club to get feedback about the racing this year from the owner's / crews last week there were probably 25 people there, the average age was probably slightly north of 60 with only one person younger than me and I am 40 next year, of those present I would guess that at least half will have to have given up sailing within 10 years due to old age and there just aren't enough younger people coming through to replace them - I know there are also a whole load of other factors for this but we could at least try to give them boats that they might want to sail.

Tha's not exactly what we see happening.
A lot of people are staying in dinghies until they are well into bus pass territory. Not always for cost reasons, a lot of us prefer the racing.
I don't see much interest in Sportsboats. Some dinghy people get drawn into local OD keelboats like XODs etc. Some of us dabble in the odd passage race in JOG or club winter series.
Last time I raced a 'big boat' 2/3 of the crew were active dinghy sailors.

People on this thread have been talking about 'entry level' racers around 35 feet. There's a big slice of your problem, few people under 50 can afford that.
You need to be looking at something more like Sonata or at most Impala size.

 

[wotayottie]

The rating system not mentioned, Portsmouth Yardstick, might be a better alternative than NHC?

Portsmouth yardstick relied on clubs feeding back information on race results to the RYA and they failed to do that. I think I remember the RYA saying that in the final year only 11 clubs in the UK sent back their race results so the PY base numbers simply wernt reliable.

As I understand it, NHC uses a simplified version of the VPP used by the RORC to generate base numbers from boat dimensions. Arguably over simplified even worse than Flaming complains of bu thats a different story. And then it uses either of two software programs to alter handicaps in the light of results relative to the rest of the fleet. This is exactly what PY correctly applied also did though some clubs left the numbers unchanged as a sort of faux IRC.

If you take the reciprocal of the PY number and run a correlation check against NHC the result is quite high, but because its multiply by rather than divide by, people think the two are completely different. They arent. NHC was just a more reliable way of getting the start number from boat dimensions and in that respect it wasnt unlike many Byron numbers.

 

[lw395]

No, PY is fundamentally different.
All Impala ODs will have the same PY, they will not have the same NHC number.
Personally I would not buy a boat to race under NHC.

 

[Chris 249]

I've heard that said many times and I still think its a load of nonsense. Once a fleet has settled down, the only way you can win in NHC is by individual performance improvement race after race whereas in IRC if you dont have the cash to kit out the boat with all the latest go faster kit you are unlikely to succeed

But sorry, as shown in the earlier example, a system like NHC is biased against top performers because they have fewer routes to improve their performance; they are already normally sailing well-developed boats to a high standard. The winning crew in the example I used earlier trained by doing 100 tacks in a row. If they fluffed one, they'd go go back and start again from 1.

Despite being 3rd in the world that year, they finished only 24th on the NHC-style system at the regional championship. How much harder do you expect them to train so they can get the required improvement to win under the NHC-style system?

So - what about the crew who don't have the cash? If they sail well, they are still much better off under a different system. Look at the time gaps and examples in any one design fleet and you'll see that an "uncompetitive" boat that is very well sailed will still normally be in the top 10% or so. However, since a NHC system does NOT reward good sailing at all, the crew who get the best out of an old boat will have absolutely no more chance of a NHC win than the crew who have the flashiest boat but sail it poorly. To use an example from the same championships in other years; one year a crew turned up with an old boat about 10% overweight, with sails about 10 years old. They won the championship but were nowhere on the NHC-style system, because it does not and cannot reward sailing skill.

After all, an NHC system is basically like a gold handicap. Play well and you get a low handicap, play badly and you get a good one. I could beat Tiger Woods on handicap in a golf match if I had the right handicap, but that doesn't mean I'm as good a golfer as he is.

 

[Ingwe]

I don't see much interest in Sportsboats.

But they are out selling cruiser racers probably 100 to 1 worldwide. I think probably the two biggest selling boats (with keels) in the past 10 years are the J70 which is now over 1300 boats sold and the seascape 18 which is at 400 boats, at the J70 worlds in Italy this year they had over 160 boats.

All of the boats that have been bought by owners local to me (in Plymouth) for racing that are under five years old are capable of over 15 knots. Being about half a dozen Seascape 18's a couple of J70's a Seascape 24, two Seascape 27, a Farr280, a Ker 40 and a few large Dazcat Racer / Cruiser catamarans. Apart from the Ker 40 none of the rest of them can sail to their IRC rating. But it does show quite nicely that owners are still buying fast boats, they just aren't buying any between 30 and 40 feet and absolutely no traditional cruiser racers - if you ever get the chance to have a look at the big Dazcat's they are pretty amazing, all the comfort of a 50+ foot mono but capable of well over 20 knots and if money was no object they should definitely be the future of the cruiser racer.

 

[lpdsn]

I believe NHC is based on the Irish ECHO system. It seems to work in a very similar way at least, but it looks like it is being used differently.

Dual scoring of races under IRC and ECHO is the norm. The IRC results are taken much more seriously, but ECHO is useful as it provides a means of rewarding an improving backmarker much earlier than they could start to get results under IRC. In this way it encourages involvement and improvement. Once a boat has won a few races under ECHO then they will be handicapped out of it, but that is not really that important as by that stage they should be able to start being competitive under IRC. It is a great way of encouraging boats that never win anything to try harder (or even just to keep turning up to race).

From what Wottayottie is saying it looks like it NHC is developing differently in the UK and is being used as a standalone system. I can't see that working as it will just be frustrating to the well sailed boats.

 

[roblpm]

But they are out selling cruiser racers probably 100 to 1 worldwide. I think probably the two biggest selling boats (with keels) in the past 10 years are the J70 which is now over 1300 boats sold and the seascape 18 which is at 400 boats, at the J70 worlds in Italy this year they had over 160 boats.

All of the boats that have been bought by owners local to me (in Plymouth) for racing that are under five years old are capable of over 15 knots. Being about half a dozen Seascape 18's a couple of J70's a Seascape 24, two Seascape 27, a Farr280, a Ker 40 and a few large Dazcat Racer / Cruiser catamarans. Apart from the Ker 40 none of the rest of them can sail to their IRC rating. But it does show quite nicely that owners are still buying fast boats, they just aren't buying any between 30 and 40 feet and absolutely no traditional cruiser racers - if you ever get the chance to have a look at the big Dazcat's they are pretty amazing, all the comfort of a 50+ foot mono but capable of well over 20 knots and if money was no object they should definitely be the future of the cruiser racer.

Also the only growing fleet on the Forth is the Hunter 707s. 27 boats out for the nationals in the summer. The yacht fleet is at best static. And the average age of the skippers must be above 60.

 

[Chris 249]

if you ever get the chance to have a look at the big Dazcat's they are pretty amazing, all the comfort of a 50+ foot mono but capable of well over 20 knots and if money was no object they should definitely be the future of the cruiser racer.

Many people find that sort of boat fairly unrewarding to race, though. Many sportspeople (not just sailors) love heel, and there's even a technical term for the human love for feeling out of balance when doing sports although it escapes me at the moment. And much of the multi's speed comes from their righting moment which makes the rigging loads very heavy, and from their long slender hulls which makes them fairly unresponsive on the tiller.

We've had big and little cats in the family for decades and I've got a Formula 18 so certainly aren't anti-multi, it's just that they still don't tick the boxes for most people and arguably never will. And any slump in cruiser/racer monos probably looks mild compared to the slump in offshore racing multis. I think the offshore multi fleet in the RTI, for example, is about 35% of what it was in its peak a couple of decades ago, and the Fastnet attracts fewer multis than the multi equivalent (the Crystal Trophy) did in the '70s.

On the other hand, the offshore multis really do underline the fact that if it's real speed that you want, an ultralight planing monohull is not the answer.

 

[wotayottie]

No, PY is fundamentally different.
All Impala ODs will have the same PY, they will not have the same NHC number.
Personally I would not buy a boat to race under NHC.

Sorry but you are wrong. The Impala has two NHC base numbers depending on whether it is outboard or inboard. The number s are .892 and .897 . When the PY was running ( the RYA PY scheme now only covers dinghies) the Impala had a base number of 965 in outboard trim and then an official adjustment of 1% for the folding prop inboard version making 955 . I can send you copies of the official data if you want.

From those base numbers clubs are supposed to alter handicaps race by race in a series though as I said earlier, some clubs did not do so whilst others did.. When I was chairman of our regional sailing organisation ( ie a club of clubs scheduling regattas etc) I usef to get a lot of earache about clubs not adjusting handicaps and creating "bandits" at other clubs regattas.

 

[flaming]

I think it would at least get a few boats being built again, the way to do it would be to keep heavily penalising carbon usage in the hull / spars in boats sub 40 foot to keep the costs under control but to stop penalising boats made from conventional materials that can plane, I am thinking something along the lines of a Far East 28R scaled up to 35 foot whilst keeping it fairly simple and cheap as opposed to a scaled up Farr 280 which would be back up to absurd money.

I agree, and I've seen a few designs that look like they'd come pretty close to that and put a raceboat on the course for considerably less than JPK want for a 35 foot boat.

I'm talking about the 35 foot mark because that's what I currently sail. But the same could be said of the 30 foot mark. Where the only new boat out there is the J88. Which is demonstrably uncompetitive under IRC.

Thinking about it, one way that IRC could get round it is to move to a 2 number system. Inshore and Offshore. We all know that there are boats that are uncompetitive round the cans but win lots offshore. The J105 is a great example of that. Basically because it's very quick on a reach, but slow upwind and deep downwind in medium winds. The new Elans are the same, absolutely hopeless round the cans but one just placed very highly in the middle sea race.
IRC being run by RORC it is geared towards offshore accuracy, with the result that the ratings are not correct for fast boats when the boats spend 2/3 of the time beating, as you do round the cans. Maybe a move that said "This is your inshore rating" which adjusted for this would be a way of encouraging faster boats in smaller sizes without killing off the current fleet, especially for offshore racing.

 

[lw395]

Sorry but you are wrong. The Impala has two NHC base numbers depending on whether it is outboard or inboard. The number s are .892 and .897 . When the PY was running ( the RYA PY scheme now only covers dinghies) the Impala had a base number of 965 in outboard trim and then an official adjustment of 1% for the folding prop inboard version making 955 . I can send you copies of the official data if you want.

From those base numbers clubs are supposed to alter handicaps race by race in a series though as I said earlier, some clubs did not do so whilst others did.. When I was chairman of our regional sailing organisation ( ie a club of clubs scheduling regattas etc) I usef to get a lot of earache about clubs not adjusting handicaps and creating "bandits" at other clubs regattas.

You miss the point.
PY handicaps a design.
If we have two inboard Impalas, J120's, whatever, conforming to their class rules, they will sail off the same handicap, even if one is crewed by inept beginners and the other by a team of experts.
Any PY adjustment would be applied to the class.
In Numpty Handicap Comedy, the beginners would sail off a different rating from day 2.

 

[lw395]

I agree, and I've seen a few designs that look like they'd come pretty close to that and put a raceboat on the course for considerably less than JPK want for a 35 foot boat.

I'm talking about the 35 foot mark because that's what I currently sail. But the same could be said of the 30 foot mark. Where the only new boat out there is the J88. Which is demonstrably uncompetitive under IRC.

Thinking about it, one way that IRC could get round it is to move to a 2 number system. Inshore and Offshore. We all know that there are boats that are uncompetitive round the cans but win lots offshore. The J105 is a great example of that. Basically because it's very quick on a reach, but slow upwind and deep downwind in medium winds. The new Elans are the same, absolutely hopeless round the cans but one just placed very highly in the middle sea race.
IRC being run by RORC it is geared towards offshore accuracy, with the result that the ratings are not correct for fast boats when the boats spend 2/3 of the time beating, as you do round the cans. Maybe a move that said "This is your inshore rating" which adjusted for this would be a way of encouraging faster boats in smaller sizes without killing off the current fleet, especially for offshore racing.

There is some merit in this, but some offshore races can be 100% beat. Others can be a quick fetch to the Needles followed by an 8 hour kite leg.
Maybe it's not the size of the course?
In dinghies, we turn up on Sundays and race whatever the RO comes up with on the day. In yacht racing, most of the course is often known before people decide to enter.

Maybe Channel Handicap should be used for crossing the Channel, and PY should be used for short course within sight of Portsmouth?
There is of course nothing to stop a club running a regatta or series under some other scheme than IRC.

 

[wotayottie]

.
Any PY adjustment would be applied to the class.
.

Sorry but wrong again. When PY was properly operated , adjustments depended on the results of the previous race so you ended up with several impalas on different handicaps. PY was performance based.

We never had more than one Impala in our PY races but we did have two Sigma 33 and they sailed off very different handicaps because one was badly sailed and the other was an ex IRC sailor of some capability. In the end their handicaps were 901 and 1012 respectively and the slow boat still couldnt sail to its number.

 

[wotayottie]

Thinking about it, one way that IRC could get round it is to move to a 2 number system. Inshore and Offshore. We all know that there are boats that are uncompetitive round the cans but win lots offshore. The J105 is a great example of that. Basically because it's very quick on a reach, but slow upwind and deep downwind in medium winds. The new Elans are the same, absolutely hopeless round the cans but one just placed very highly in the middle sea race.
IRC being run by RORC it is geared towards offshore accuracy, with the result that the ratings are not correct for fast boats when the boats spend 2/3 of the time beating, as you do round the cans. Maybe a move that said "This is your inshore rating" which adjusted for this would be a way of encouraging faster boats in smaller sizes without killing off the current fleet, especially for offshore racing.

The inshore bit would IMO be an excellent idea since they could specify that it was for circular courses ie races that finish where they start. In that way they would minimise the sort of issues you raise about performance on reaches and runs and beats.

The problem would remain with offshore passage races where you are weather dependant and can end up with the whole race being downwind. You might tackle this by each design having two ratings, one for upwind , one for downwind. And the race officer declares a mix of winds based on weather forecasts before the start. Thus you might get a handicap base on 60% of your upwind number and 40% of your downwind number.

Then of course there is the issue of wind strengths. And differering handicaps for the number of doors and tables removed. Plus you would like something about sail cloths. Where do you stop?

 

[Keen_Ed]

Thinking about it, one way that IRC could get round it is to move to a 2 number system. Inshore and Offshore. We all know that there are boats that are uncompetitive round the cans but win lots offshore. The J105 is a great example of that. Basically because it's very quick on a reach, but slow upwind and deep downwind in medium winds. The new Elans are the same, absolutely hopeless round the cans but one just placed very highly in the middle sea race.
IRC being run by RORC it is geared towards offshore accuracy, with the result that the ratings are not correct for fast boats when the boats spend 2/3 of the time beating, as you do round the cans. Maybe a move that said "This is your inshore rating" which adjusted for this would be a way of encouraging faster boats in smaller sizes without killing off the current fleet, especially for offshore racing.

Rorc are strong believers in one number systems, and I doubt very much they would ever seriously think about a multiple number for their own rating system. Horses for courses/every dog has his day.

What about a Fastnet which is a long beat out to the rock and a run back? One big windward leeward.