Right now, I race with my 10 year old daughter and have never had a better time.
Now that's unbeatable !
You provide some sound points in your post this time. Hell I started out myself on an old Prindle 16 as that was all I could affort at the time. Loved that boat to bit; almost literally. I had to sell it to finish my new boat and because it was absolutely spend race wise. It was still in one piece so I could still get some money out of it. I learned all the things you mentioned on it. And in this sense I believe that any cat is a good starter boat.
As said earlier I'm disagreeing with some of the more extravagent claims not with stuff as written above. In my personal experience I can say that getting on to a modern boat felt like learning to sail all over again. Yes I know about tactics and starts, but in the way of handling the boat I had to do alot of relearning. Great fun though but on this basis I wrote what I wrote in my other posts.
The 8 I am refering to cut their teeth for 3/4 of that time on the non-spin boats I mentioned.
Well, I think that their time on the water with the new boats and competitive minded spirits would have places them were they are now even if they didn't have years of experience in the non-spi boat fleet. Afterall during the past decade the courses changed from triangles to windward-leeward as well. This did introduce alot more dynamics in the racing. Many things changes, sail trim became very important, much much more then on H16's and P16's. Prebend, spreader rake, etc ; everything became readily adjustable.
I think it to be foolish to think that the old boats experience like H16, TheMightyHobie18 P16 etc make up a large portion of todays succes on the modern boats. I know that my prior experience didn't help me much beyond a good start and recognizing the need to train hard on your manouvres. But then again I never did much covering because that is pretty difficult if you have one of the slowest baots in the open class fleet (H16/P16).
In addition I think that starting right away on a modern boat is a bit of a steep learning curve in the beginning but still to be preferred (faster) then starting out first on an old design liek the H16/P16 and switch to modern later. I truly believe you'll loose more time then you can win back later.
The boats are different.
Best of luck, See ya !
Wouter
