Every racer knows who the competition is... Sailors are racing against their peers.. They are racing those top flight guys... no matter what flavor of boat they are on. This is human nature and it operates right on down the pecking order.
If someone was first to the beach on a N20... Do you really believe They ignored the time the first F18 finished... BS!
Find me somebody who let a boat pass them because they were in the other class... I simply don't believe it.
While it bothers me to agree with Mark, here he is spot on.
There was a very large spread of skill levels present in this race. The 18's were right in the mix with the 20's in light air because of the drivers more than the percieved pointing ability of the designs. More boats means more people will have someone right with them during the race reguardless of the type of boat. If the boats are close enough in thoeretical performance I do not see what difference it makes in allowing them in the race. If there was sufficient support to field 30+ boats of a 1 design then put on restrictions, but up untill then let it be open.
We had quite a lively discussion on the beach at Cocoa about this. Why not run an F16 in this race. The handicap number is very close to the F18. Several F16's have finished first to the beach in distance races against the 18 and 20 against crews that were in this race. The organizers can do what they want with their race but in theory it would be bennefical for the beach crews to restrict the race to skill as opposed to boat type if you want try and get them all to finish as close as possible.
Brian's vision of an event that draws media attention needs to be looked at. You gotta think there is a lot of media potential for the non-sailors to have a david and golliath kind of race within the race too. If you are selling Video to sailors in the US the attendance is pretty limited. To really gain viewership and hence exposure there has to be some reason for non sailors to watch. Like it or not this will probably result in some of the sailors having to bend their ideas on what the race is about.
I watched some car rally event on TV last night where they talked cosntantly about the structure of the event being about and around the coverage being what made the event sucessfull. They had enough in it, that they even loaded all the cars up and flew them to China for 1 leg of the race. After watchin the special i still could not tell you what the rules for the race were and I could give a crap about cars or car racing, but I watched and was interested because of how it was produced. (Lots of party and scantily clad women helped also)
My thoughts.
M
