Forum Posters, <br> <br>My comments on grass roots growth stem from my opinion that massive growth in any class will only come from the bottom of new people , begginers etc moving up. People new to sailing will not drop the cash on a high performance boat to see if they like it. And if they did they probably would not like it because they would be so far over their head. There is significantly more prejidous to cats in the monohull world than there is between the various brands of cats. A few monohull sailors will jump on the bandwagon if the class becomes strong, but they will never be the catalyst to jump start the thing. To have a class begin now, you have no choice but to draw some sailors from existing groups. <br> <br>My frustrastion comes from the amount of time spent in discussions on how engineer utopia. Not on how to creat an organization but how to divide the sailors. <br> <br>Most serious racers are interested in having the largest start possible. H20 sailors for example dont race the boat because they have some deep seated lust for Hobie products, they race it because of the size of the participation, large starts many places around the country, a decent organization, making for good racing. Many Hobie people would be attracted to a nationaly active Formula class, but not if it has restrictively huge minimum weights, as there are a lot of couples. <br> <br>I am a firm beliver in letting the boat determine the sailor. In the H20 class the top is not loaded with the lightest crews. I have never seen, or heard of anyone who moved up in to a larger active class because they blamed their lack of competitivness on weight, do any better. The truely skilled racers can make any boat go. In this area, the ones who moved up to the active classes are still in the middle to the back of the fleet, the ones who bought "faster" open fleet boats, are often still being passed by the boat they left. The old guys blaming their new larger middles most often fall into this too. The new young guys are not just lighter, they are truely faster. This disgruntled fring of "blame it on my weight sailors" will always remain unhappy, and creating a fleet for them is a waist of time. If your going to add weight, add all the way up to some amount over the heaviest crew, make it truely equal and eliminate the arguments (not going to happen) <br> <br>Enough of my weight sop box. <br> <br>I do agree that weight has a place. Dead weight for crew adjustment is not it. The formula class idea allows a much larger latitude for this. It is not one design, and the 20 foot class in scope is 1) currently over powered for the 8.5 beam, 2) has hull paramaeters that are not fully dictated by the finness ratio. <br> <br>My proposal <br> <br>1) Boat lenght 20' (simple) <br>2) Beam 8.5' (would like to see wider but not trailerable and keeps system simple) <br>3) Boat weight 320 or reasonable classs goal weight. - The manufactureres do not currently control their process to maintain weight. It is not worth the cost when 90% of your sales are to rec sailors, thats why they will not divulge the boat weights. They can and will build boats to spec if their are sales. Lowering the class weight gradually will only make the procrastinators not join the organization, they will always be waiting for it to drop that next bit before they buy that boat or change sails. In the short term to account for the current heavy boats, allow some sail area modifier to be grandfathered in. <br>4) Crew weight - None, or some minimum for safety to right the boat. - Do not try and force divide the class especially by weight. The formula idea allows heavier crews to choose hull designs with more boyancy, lighter crews to have bendier rigs etc, all to fit your size. Unless your corrections can take into account drags, sea states, gusts,etc, your waisting your time trying to place rules against it. A light crew is disadvantaged up wind on an overpowered boat, especially as the wind speed increases. They then have an advantage down wind. If on the AVERAGE (fat guys do not just look at the results on a light race day), this is not equal, then place some sail area modifier to the sytem (Hey, sounds like the european system spin adjustment. hmmmm) <br>5) Sails and rig - I do not have exact numbers but the concept would be <br> <br>Max mast height <br>Max Main and jib combination <br>Max spin - Area adjustments to the spin size would be simplest to control for corrections in old boat design weight, or crew weight. Weight seems to have the biggest effect in downwind performance, so some lift factor in area could be applied to help offset the difference. <br>6) construction materials, foils etc open. <br> <br>Se the boat and move on to discussions on what the class can do to attract the participation. Hobie gets slammed a lot but the class does o good job of having events, not just races. Simple formula, then move on with selling the class, and not by 5 million correction factors to apease the disgruntled minority, it just includes more people in the argument. <br> <br>I probably forgot several items, but its a start. <br> <br> <br>Matt <br> <br><br><br>
