That seemed to be the case, pretty extensive damage on NED's bow:

I've sent Optis in 30 knots in Newport, I've never been thanked as much at any regatta, including cat regattas (which says a lot, since I'm surrounded by friends there). Some parents even stopped as they drove out of Ft. Adams.

They all said the same thing: too many RCs and OAs keep everyone ashore when it gets over 12-15 knots. Only works with a strong team and great support from the parents and coaches on the water...

Mike

Edit: Officially, the wind was solid in the low 20s, but there were some gnarly gusts at the weather mark. The kids were troopers!

It's a long road. Still very early in the olympic cycle. it will be interesting to see who comes to the forefront over the next 3 years. I suspect there will be several team moving to and displaced from the top before this is over.

Absolutely. At this event the teams with cat experience (predictably) are doing very well. I don't expect this to be the case by the end of the quad. I think teams with prior international campaign/olympic experience will adapt to the boat and their experience will show through. Just my opinion.

REALLY!

This has been the standard US position.... take an All American college 420 sailor and coach em up....in 49ners or Cats or windsurfers etc. I think it is just wrong.

Prior international experience is also over rated.. Bundy tried a short go at helming the 49ner when the T was dropped.. did not work. The number of sailors who medal in two very different classes are few and far between.
In fact, I will argue that the AC 45 experience tends to suggest that the instincts to race the high performance boats must be developed from an early age. Terry Hutchinson is a great world class match racer and sailor but he was replaced with a 49ner helm. Terry just could not make up the countless hours on the helm of a boat that is super high performance.

I am going to go with Gladwalls theory that mastery, is at its core, about hours doing the exact task.

The idea that a great sailor can change disciplines and win a gold is not a sure thing....

It's about understanding the precise location of "the limit" that you can push a boat. It's very different from platform to platform. I'm incredibly uneasy driving a J22 with the kite up in breeze because I don't know where things start to fall apart. I'm going to have to broach the thing a couple of times to figure it out.

I don't think there's some hard uncrossable line with regards to experience and skill on various boats - but I do think that the amount of experience required to obtain the enough of the human feel/touch to push a particular type of boat to the edge is often under rated.

It was an unfortunate accident. It was a little too full on to have the kite up that quickly

I don't know what happened to all of my edits to my post above, but there was more there...

Anyway, that interview is quite telling. Sarah looks utterly disgusted. Not sure of the timing of the video relative to the protest, or if something else was going on.

Hopefully, they aren't falling into the mentaility that they're playing catchup (which it clearly sounds like that's exactly how they feel). They agreed that racing against these top sailors, in Europe with the coaches, is improving their game. Sadly, they intend to come home and not race or practice over there until the next major event...

As for the cat vs. mono sailing background: The AC45s bolstered the idea that any high-caliber sailor could jump on a cat and win against folks from the cat sailing background. I think that primarily works because of the size of the boats, and the match racing experience; neither of which exist in the beach-cat Olympic regatta.

Said another way, while all those dinghy sailors are learning how to sail these beach cats, the beach cat guys will be learning how to make them go faster than they already race them.

The old Hobie racing books don't lie. The key to winning beach cat regattas is going fast, preferably on the favored side of the course. Boat on boat tactics pale in comparison to the importance of just plain going fast. (Somewhat over-simplified, but I'm sure you get the idea.)

Mike

I can tell you that this isn't the case.

As one of JC's best friends, trying to find time to invite him and his new fiancee over for dinner is impossible since he's ALWAYS training.

;P

The next ISAF WC event is only two weeks away btw (April 20-27):
http://www.sailing.org/worldcup/events/Hyeres-2013.php

The next official event after that is Qingdao, China (October) although somehow I doubt many Euro teams will make their way over there.

If you are a talented sailor making the transition from any other class to multis will be doable, especially when paired with either an experienced multi helm or crew.
The female helm currently at the top of the leaderboard has only been sailing on cats for about 6 months now, the second Dutch female helm for not much longer
and is currently 4th which proves that you dont necesarilly have to be a "born" catsailor to be succesful.

ah... but I am not arguing cat sailor... just high performance apparent wind machines.... skiffs and cats are different then 470s and lasers. boards/kites will be different again.

There are so few woman cat sailors at the elite level before the Mixed Multihull discipline... it will be tough to argue either way... if Carolihn Brower competes and wins... does it prove my point??? Not really.

The virtually complete lack of Usual suspects in the class was appealing for many countries..... everyone started off at about the same level and you have a shot.

I would look at the woman's skiff ranks... they had a bit more of a pipeline before woman's skiffs made the games.

One other Cat example came to mind... the Swedes had a guy with a medal in stars (I think) who jumped onto the Tornado for his next campaign... it did not go well (Two or three cycles ago). mind you he had 1000s of hours into the game and a medal as well.. but you need to be putting that time into the exact skills you need.

Mark,

I'll agree that the apparent wind background is very important. Neither my helm nor I had ever sailed cats before buying our F18, but Brooks (my helm) had sailed 29ers at a very high level in high school. We found the transition to the cat to be pretty straightforward. We also benefited from the help of a lot of good teams.

I think this is a HUGE set of points to make.... LOTS of sailors and Good sailors to help are key..

I think this is the US achilles... Its a huge country and the critical mass is just not there... moreover... you don't have a lot of the former elite sailors still in the game all be it at much less intensity.

Just going from the interview, that is what they said. They will not be sailing OVER THERE.

I think that they need more of it, not less. Just my opinion, again based on what I heard in the interview.

Mike

Three Dutch teams in the medal race and two on the podium, nice results for such a small country
Congrats to JC on his 10th place as well.

Interesting to see how young this fleet is with almost none of the "old" T sailors from the 2008 games present (Mitch, Bundy, etc).

I have it on good authority that their was photographic evidence that they had broken overlap and should not have been penalized,but they chose not to pursue it any farther so they could maintain focus on the sailing.Kudos to them. Also sounds like team syndicate politics may be in full play.

I agree, sometimes, no one "wins" a protest.

Mike

Seems a lot of folks pissed about it. . .
Is ISAF’s new scoring system at the World Cup events crap?