Originally Posted by samc99us
Ventucky, I will speak primarily to the Nacra 20 issue but this applies to all. First, there are a few different issues at stake here:

1) Portsmouth is pretty dead. Boats should be using SCHRS IMO, and they have clear guidelines on how to measure a boat to get a rating (if it differs from stock). Really it is looking at total sail area (power) to length and weight

2) On the 20, and really any older Nacra built boat, it was/is up to the owners to maintain the class as Todd has stated, and this is where the problem lies. The owners never took this upon themselves (well, we tried but it was too little too late), but EP/Nacra did the 20 fleet no favors by failing to publish class legal sail specifications. Several builders (Glaser, Schurr sails, Smyth, Calvert even) have built sails for N20's at this point (search Open 20), and those are sort of obvious, but how they differ from the class legal EP sails is a bit unclear, because there are no measurements published for a class legal N20 main/jib/kite. To further obfuscate the matter, not all EP N20 sails are built to the same templates. Perhaps they start out that way, perhaps they don't, regardless, I have evaluated N20 EP kites stacked on top of each other, under tension, and noticed upwards of 5" of luff length discrepancy between batches of kites. Some kites were stitched from the factor, some weren't, they all were class legal N20 EP built spinnakers. Further, a sticker is a sticker, you can remove an EP sticker and place it on a Glaser sail for example. I don't think 99% of the populace would do such a thing, but in a very competitive race billed as taking place in single manufacturer one-design boat (which is what the N20 class was billed as when Nacra was wholly owned and operated in the U.S), certain individuals with highly competitive juices may have been swapping stickers on certain sails between days to gain a competitive edge. This sort of nonsense was mostly eliminated in the F18 class by use of a published measurement template.


Amen to point #1...

Regarding the NACRA 20 deal, thanks for clearing that up.... I was misinformed by a past Inter 20 sailor that I now feel had an ax to grind...