Jake,
What about this "one design problem". How do we compensate for the fact that sailors, people, are not one design and this by itself has a large affect on the outcome of sailboat races???
There seems to be two schemes in place today.
1. One is the factory class where only factory parts are legal. All other parts are illegal. This is a money driven idea and does not inhance one design sailboat racing but is used as an excuse/example of "one design sailboat racing".
2. Another plan is to have all identical boats, masts, etc except for the sails. In this plan all sails are the same size/area but the camber distribution, the shape in the sail, differs. There are full cut sails and medium draft sails and flatter cut sails. The heavier weight teams use the full cut sails because with their greater weight, they are going to bend the one design mast more and therefore their sail must have more luff round. The medium/average weight teams use the medium cut sails and the light weight teams use the flatter cut sails. This plan has shown in many different one design classes over several years that it leads to tighter competition than giving all sailors the same cut of sail.
Let's look at Olympic class sailing and see how "the best", the ultimate sailing classes/contests, do it. If there is a more correct way to handle this problem, surely it is done most correctly in the Olympic sailing contest. When I check on the Star and Soling and Yingling and Tornado and Finn and other Olympic classes, I find that the Laser is the only class requires all sailors to use the same cut of sail. All other classes allow variations in sail cut within some max limits for that class. Who is right? Other large one design classes in the US such as Snipe, Thistle, Lightning, J24, etc all allow variations in sail cut within max sail measurements for that class.
Both of these schemes cannot be more correct. One of them has to be more fair and the other less fair, less correct, in compensating for variations in sailors weight.
We can require the light weight teams to add weight up to the average teams weight and this fixes the light weight teams advantage in light winds. How do we help the light weight team out in heavy weather sailing? To take away their light wind advantage and not fix their heavy weather disadvantage is not fair.
What do we do to get it right???
Bill
