Is this the dawning of a new era?

(from the front page of SA)

Holy cause-and-effect, Batman...

Um, yeah.. NO!

F18s and A-Cat popularity did not get here overnight, just because of the AC. Not to even mention H16.

Having the AC on cats can't hurt, but in and of itself, certainly won't increase attendance at our NAs any time soon, and certainly couldn't have made an impact in time for THIS year's NAs.

Said another way, if the AC goes back to monohulls, I wouldn't expect much change that would be CAUSED by that decision.

EDIT: BTW, how much did they edit John Casey's article, or is he just speaking a new language?
"we immediately went twin wire" that would be double-trapped...
"grabbed cunningham" that would be cranked in the downhaul...
And when was the last time anyone was "helming" a beach cat?

Mike

Casey had been hanging out a bunch in Europe...lord knows what they call stuff over there but I can hear "twin wire" pretty easily in a Norwegian accent.

I don't see it as a dawn of a new era - just slow and consistent evolution.

I think some of the leaner sailors are finally starting to wake up and smell the...apparent wind...which only a fast multihull can generate. As the economy stays in the toilet, I think money is becoming more of an issue as well, some of those 2 up mono's dinghys cost more than a new F18 and only go 1/3 as fast.

When it comes to speed, cats provide more bang for the buck, and now that there are more cat fleets around the country, perhaps the mono boys are starting to look around at other, faster, options. I think all the good press SA is giving to cats certainly helps, since that's where the mono racers seem to hang out.

i do see a lot of multis on the SA homepage today..

They (Sailing Anarchy) have been slowly turning more multihull friendly but it came in with a rush after the last America's Cup when the development and technology was coming to light.

friendly is a pretty loose term Jake.

I'd go with less hostile. Use of the modifier "a lot" would be a stretch as well.

I think we may be at the dawn of a new era or maybe it would be more appropriate to call it a new beginning. At the very least it appears that catamaran sailing has undergone a major transition to a core of three very strong classes after about ten years of fragmentation. This obviously was not a result of the Americas Cup but if all goes well with the AC (still a big if) I think catamaran sailing will benefit greatly.

Can some body explain HOW you think America's Cup racing will help, support or drive cat racing forward.

I have to tell you... I also play with monohulls and the Cup action had little or no impact on sailing in my neck of the woods. If Cup Competition drives sailing... Why are the monohull classes experiencing similar decline trends.

Technology advances like cuben fiber sails was irrelevant to my level of the sport. The fact that cup designs could break in two and sink certainly did not inspire any of the boat builders IMO.

Technology development will run counter to keeping the H16, F18 classes healthy. The A class is much more design driven but they don't want flying A cats.

In fact, the only thing that has come out of Cup Racing is the notion that YC's should manage and fund match racing for an elite core of racers.

The need for a mechanism to build star status for the pro's at the helms of J22's or something so that they can maintain their pro sailing career was not a great result IMO.

I would be curious if anyone thinks that match racing F18's is a winning strategy to grow the sport of cat racing.

We certainly need a big goal to inspire young cat racers... But.. the nitty gritty of how to leverage AC cup racing on cats is not clear.

Good question. It’s not about the equipment and it’s not even about match racing. It’s about how sailors (mostly younger ones) identify with the sport. Can you remember playing street hockey in the driveway when you where a kid? One kid was pretending he was Bobby Orr another Gretzky. It’s no different with sailing. That 16 year old kid in cut off jeans doing bow on a Tartan Ten is dreaming that he is on an IACC class yacht. With the AC in catamarans that image starts to shift and catamarans start to loose its “crazy old guy on the beach who doesn’t really know how to sail” status. It’s about what younger sailors aspire to. Whether they ever actually make it to the AC makes no difference. Losing the Olympics was bad for all these reasons but the AC has much more gravitational pull in the sailing community at large.
I think your most important question is “how do you leverage it.” I’m not sure about that one yet.

I agree that the gravitational pull of the AC trumps the Olympics by a huge distance...

I have been thinking about how to leverage the AC machine. I agree that technology and match racing are not the proper hooks.

I think the AC has given us the path... The "junior boat program"... is their way of building a feeder system of cup star sailors for their Reality tv show called the America's Cup.

I think of it as following players in the minor leagues of baseball or college BBall and football.... When you are attached to a star minor league player from your home town, school, club ... you feel that you share the success when they make the big leagues and do well.

Seems to me... the idea is to figure out how to build a regatta structure that steps young sailors up the sailing ladder through the OD classes AND gives them some fame and glory along the way to ultimately getting a shot at the junior AC programs

Maybe the way to start is for the OD classes to offer stipends to top sailors in an age bracket with the idea that they campaign in the class for a year..
Say Hobie 16's... raced by helms of 14 to 18.... F18's... 18 to 24. You can win the stipend once.

Couple it with some coaching from the old crazy guys ....

plus... access mentors in the Cup programs that sailed the beach cats ...

Couple this with lots of in class PR plus PR around the national class events and you have a structure that starts to create some stars in a pipeline towards the AC.

Thoughts?

Pulling 2 strings..........

First of all, the Dutch accent does not sound anything like the Norwegian one!
The term we use over here is "double trapeze", translating twin-wire into dutch would just sound weird.

And what is JCs problem with the Tiger?
"...eventually pulling their souped up Hobie Tiger over-then quickly right side down.
The only thing I saw visible at one time was their custom black Marstrom daggerboards."

He makes it sound like cheating.

Karl,

I was referring to the front page - the Ed and Clean...JC has had a lot of positive influence over there too. As far as the forums go, well...yeah.

As far as the positive effect goes, it's simply exposure. High level exposure to all will be had by the media and ice machine (as opposed to water cooler) conversations at the sailing clubs around the US. These things do make a difference and the perception is changing in those that have open minds about this kind of thing. Multihull sailors, usually considered by crusty "yachties" as a fringe group of non-technical speed freaks all of a sudden have the show in the highest of all the technical competitions where the unveiling of the technology rivals the attention of actual racing action. Even the last AC, though it was a blow out, changed a lot of mindsets toward multihulls. What's being realized is that there is just as much design consideration going into the design and sailing a properly performing multihull as any monohull. Now that the monohull mainstream has been drug kicking and screaming into this multihull America's Cup, this mis-perception of multihulls will change and will take our sport to the next level. It doesn't take much exposure to achieve this.

Just to stick up for Clean here... I've gotten to know the guy through the years...

he was NEVER anti-multihull. He simply is an editor - who editorializes and posts stories about what is sent across his inbox. He told me point blank that the reason why multihull news wasn't making the front page was for only one reason - not enough of it was being submitted to him.

During the 2009 T500, he was the biggest fan of what was going on. He loved the beach starts and finishes and ended every sentence with "that was f'ing cool man".

Trey's taken him out on the N20 and he digs it. He dig anything thats fast and sails. For the C-class champs, Clean was the BIGGEST fan of it all. He's about as pro-multihull as you can get.

They did (SA that is), send J Casey and Mr. Clean down to S. Padre TX June 2010, to cover the entire Great Texas 300. Videos, threads, etc. I was there, done that, what's next? ;-)

Speed isn't the only factor, or we'd all be kiting. The key really has never been to "convert" the (un)willing, but to find other sources for new sailors. While more press is great, we don't want to be viewed as parasitic.

Mike

It's not parasitic if they WANT to be infected.

This also holds true for the exposure of sailing in general. My experience is that most editors/reporters like to receive the work partly done. Like 99% ready...

On the other hand, it is possible to see about anything published if one has the means and will to do the work: write an interesting text, add pictures and videos, distribute as a press-release and many editors won't change a comma.