Alex is a super fit girl and a hell of a sailor too. German Olympic 470 team in Sydney. They would not have a problem throwing the T around the course FAST with either of them skippering.

Anyway I have been away from the Computer for a while and have not kept up to date with the Ts. Just spent 3 days in Hospital after parking my car under a semi at 60kmh.

All fine now. Busted up and sore but will recover for racing in about a month.

Looks like we have an interesting finish on our hands for the Tornado. The US will find it hard now to beat AUT with only 1 race remaining. Hagara will keep a close cover on them. But the way this regatta has gone, with light flukey winds.... who knows what will happen.

No fairytail finish for Forbes either. Lets hope they come away with a medal though.

Alex did not reepresent Germany at the 2000 Olympics in the womens 470.

5 Nicola Birkner
Wibke Buelle GER Pts: 8, 2, 4, 6, 12, 4, (20), 13, 1, 4, (15) = 54

In the Australian Hobie Titles Darren and Alex capsized in 3 times in 1 race. I think you should give John Forbes some credit in this great team.

Sailing and Equestrian are the only two disciplines in the Olympics that have events open to men and women competing directly against each other. It seems to work in equestrian, but it does not seem to work in sailing. I believe the Laser, the 49er, the Tornado and the Star (and probably the Finn, too) are all "open" classes, but how many women do you see competing in the Olympics in those classes? Almost zero.

Why do you think this is? I think I know, but I would like to hear opinions.

Is it easier for women to control horses than boats?

Appologies, I thought she did..... She did campaign though.

Forbes is an instrumental part of the team and I did not show Forbes any disrespect. I have raced against Bundy and Forbes quiet a few times and know them off the water too.

I have met Alex when she has been in AUS and have seen her sail. What I was saying is that Alex can sail and with Bundy would have no trouble getting the T going fast as with Alex and John if they sailed together.

The Bundy and Forbes team may have never won gold but should go down as the best Cat sailors the world has ever seen. Along with their on water achievements together and seperatly they have done quiet allot for the Torando Class both in Australia and Around the World. They have also spent many hours with new teams comming through like us and I have nothing but the greatest respect for the guys formost as people then as sailors.

Mary,
The weight of the sailor required to be competitive in a given sailboat class is in the boat designer's hands. If the boat is designed with a high sail area to righting moment ratio, the boat requires heavier weight people to sail the boat. If the designer designs the boat with a lower sail area to righting moment ratio, smaller weight people can sail the boat to its max performance.
Generally designers strive to design faster and faster boats. To a large degree this means have more sail area than the competition. This increased sail area to be faster than the competition requires larger people to hold the boat down and drive the sails to their max capacity.
The solution to this "larger sail area/heavier sailors required" spiral is to make the boats wider. It is torque or righting moment that is required to hold the boats down and drive the sails to their max capacity. Righting moment or torque is a function of sailor's weight and "lever arm". For a given required righting moment, required sailor's weight goes down as lever arm goes up.
Example: If we took all of the present 8ft and 8.5ft wide catamaran designs and made them 12ft wide, women would rule the race courses and catamaran sailing would be a womens' sport. Two momen at 120 pounds each on a 12ft lever arm can generate the same righting moment as two men at 180 pounds on an 8ft lever arm. Both righting moments equal 2880 ftlbs of torque. This calculation is simplified to make it easy for non engineers to understand but you get the point: Wider takes less weight. Make it wide enough and women can do it, sail the boat to its max performance. Wider is simple.
Bill

Thanks, Bill, but what you are also saying is that with the existing designs, women need to be heavier to be competitive.

Actually, I was thinking in terms of weight being equal and sailing/racing ability being equal. And for the sake of argument, let's pretend that there are as many women racing sailboats as there are men. I think you still will rarely see women competing directly against men at the highest levels of the sport. It does not have to do with whether they are heavy enough to hold the boat down.

I think I know the answer, but I am just wondering whether other people will come up with it.

By the way, I was wrong in my former post -- the three sailing classes that are Open to both men and women are Laser, 49er and Tornado.

Mary to answer your question all the classes are either men’s or women’s disciplines except the Tornado which is “open”. If you look at the classes’ rarely do the men and the women race together. In the 470 after their Olympic win in 2000 Jenny Armstrong and Belinda Stowell did have some top 3 finishes in mixed events and also won a grade 2 event. So in certain conditions and classes women can compete equally with men.

The Tornado with its much higher sheet loads does not lend itself to a mixed combination. At the Seoul Olympics only 2 skippers raced holding the main the other preferred the crew to handle this. One of the 2 was the great Paul Elvstrom sailing with his daughter. While it is very possible that this great sailor would have held the main no matter whom his crew was. By the numbers of non mixed crews racing at the Olympic level has become a farce to call the Multihull discipline as “open”.

If the IOC was honest and concerned about equality they should make the Tornado a male discipline and bring in another discipline that is either forced to be mixed or female. But with the pressure on sailing to reduce their numbers not increase the number of disciplines it seems highly unlikely. Again the multihull fraternity is discriminated against by a policy restricting women into the Olympics. While other claases race as a gender based

New2Sailing2, thanks for your good answer. But it is not the one I am looking for. (Although you do hint at it.)

Just to correct what you said, as I mentioned in my previous post, the three sailing classes that are "Open" to both men and women are the Laser, the 49er and the Tornado. At least they are listed as "Open" on the ISAF website.

Dear Mary,
I know what you want me to say but I am not going to say it.
Back to my point, there are not many 180 pound women and there are even fewer 180 pound women who want to sail/race sailboats. There are plenty of 120 to 130 pound women who would like to race sailboats but due to the design of the boats, the 120 pound women are not competitive except in light winds where they can hold the boats down. When the wind picks up, the average size female can't hold the boat down and the big guys walk away to windward because of their weight, not their superior sailing ability. It is no fun to try to compete in this situation.
The 470 is an example of a depowered, reduced sail area, 2 person racing monohull. The powered up versions of this same boat are the 505 and the Flying Dutchman. The 470 is a slightly smaller platform than the 505 or FD with a greatly reduced sail plan. Therefore the boat favors small men and average size women. No problem. Ever see two 180 pound guys race a 470? Two 140 pound guys will lap them in a two lap race.
As far as the comment about sheet loads being too great for women; that's what higher mechanical advantage pulley systems are for. I have 8:1 mechanical advantage on a 150sqft jib on the RC30. It is like power steering; trim the sail with one hand. The mainsheet is 16:1 and the main traveller control is 8:1. I put power steering on everything. Make it easy. Why not?
Bill

Mary,

Could it be that ISAF may have got it wrong? This is from their minutes of the 2000 events committee.

The Events Committee therefore recommends that the following events
make up the 2004 Olympic Regatta:

Men Windsurfer; Single Handed Dinghy; Two Handed Dinghy Keelboat – Fleet

Women: Windsurfer; Single Handed Dinghy; Two Handed Dinghy Keelboat – Match

Open: Single Handed Dinghy; Two Handed Dinghy; Multihull

ISAF then changed the women keelboat to match.

If ISAF thinks that men and women can not compete equally and therefore set up separate disciplines in the windsurfer, single handed dingy, double handed dingy and keel boats why not the mulithull? In other sports men and women have separate disciplines. Women runners don't run against the men. Regardless of any reason whether it be strength, height, weight let gender compete against gender. If all things were equal then we would have more "open" racing at the olympics because of the classes chosen.

The Hobie 16 is one such boat that does allow "open" racing. The current world champions is a mixed team. You can not state weight or height has an influence there. As with over 200 team there were a combination of male/male the same weight and height. It was team work and skill not gender. But has an all woman team won, no.

So for the orgainal answer, if you choose the right discipline you can have a very succesul mixed team. But for ulitmate fairness it should be gender based.

The 49er is "Open Double-handed High Performance Dinghy."
The Laser is "Open Single-handed Dinghy."
The Tornado is "Open Double-handed Multihull."

Here is the link: http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/classes.htm

Bill,



You example is not a good one. Power steering still uses the same steering rack and so has the same number of turns lock to lock. When you add purchases to a pully system, you increase the amount of rope (and so time to make the adjustment) - I would not want to sail with a purchase any greater than my 7 or 8:1 as I would not be able to dump mainsail in the gusts quick enough.

I agree it makes the final sheet loads less, but at the expense of speed to trim - Are you advocating powered systems for out cats - I don't think you are.

Flame me for it, but here are my answers. Based on my own experiences racing with a female crew and experiences with mixed racing crews at events

-1- Women often don't have the competitive drive equal to the men. This not to say they don't have it but just in a different shape and magnitude then men.

-2- Men quite often seek out sports that make them feel a little scared, women don't. Sailing a Tornado under full rig is definately on the scared side of control.

-3- It takes a huge investment in time and giving up very large chunks of your personal life to be competitive at the level that the Tornado guys are. Women often do not values victories as to be enough substitution for the "life lost". And then women have the issue of "building a family" in alot more profound way then men. Of course creating a family takes women of the scene st the ages where they should be completing the last leg to being compititive by sailing 4 hours a day or more. They simply can not do that.

-4- Women are very good till the age where men have their second growth spurt and start getting wider and stronger. Now the men can use their strength, stamina and sheer amounts of testoron to compensate for inferiour sailing skills. Women, often being more carefull sailors, loose out on taken less risks or sailing less agressively.

-5- The mindset of men on board is often fully incompetible with the atmosphere that inspires a women to perform optimally. I personally found that Women will get out and race very well in rough conditions when they have absolute faith in the other and know that the other has absolute faith and respect for them. It is my experience that men do lift themselfs beyond their personal limits because the are ashamed to not life up to expectations or because of personal ambition. Women on the other hand tend to lift themselfs beyond personal limits when they feel secured by someone ready to pick them up if things go wrong or when they see that a personal win (mind over matter) experience in within reach. Men overcome for their standing amongst other, women overcome for personal victories so to say but only if the environment is controlled enough so that it doesn't come with to much risk. One more point if women start to realize that are about to "stick it to the men" then you are hard pressed to see a better playing or better performing team. Then they are like a pittbul and won't let go of the grip they have.

-6- Women are a little more inclined to accept the status quo and race what they got, men contribute to this by thinking only in terms of their own personality or capabilities. What a mixed team should do and what a man must do if analyse the strong points and weak points of a mixed crew and start adjusting the setup of the platform and controls accordingly. I can't count how many times women were put off by the spinnaker because the men (always being the skipper !) just ingnore the fact that having 2 extra ratchets on board just makes sheeting the spinnaker a lot less tiring. Often the men on the sheet will complain once or twice and then go to the gym more often to build up muscle. This route, of course, is totally imcompatible with women. Therefor women and the male companions should work out alternatives or switch roles so that the specialities of either is applied to where it is needed. That is another thing men never want to hand over the tiller and often women don't REALLY ask for it.

Here I gave a few examples why it is difficult for a mixed or all female crew to reach the very top of sailing after the men have reached their adult size and mindset. Attacking these point directly improves the likelyhood of mixed crews moving up in the listings.

And remember afterall why Ellen McArthur is succesful and why 110 kg crews like Daniel van Kerckhof / Anna-Liese Byrne and 140 kg Andrew Williams + Petra Eiggl (Taipan 4.9 + spi crews) win their races. It has nothing to do with extra width and all with trim and adjusting the boat and crew to the limitations of a mixed crew. Also with the mindset that a mixed crew can win in such a class of boats.

So

Is your rig to powerful ? Get another main cut for your weight. Accept that you don't have the edge as you did in light air anymore over becoming competitive in the stronger stuff.

Are the sheet loads to high ? Redesign the systems so the loads are lower (cascade down system, F16 forum, is a good example of that)

Is the crew role to heavy for one ? Switch roles onboard. Mainsheet to highly loaded, hand it to the crew on teh upwind legs and train on making the boat go upwind as a team effort with clearly defined "I do this you do that"

Is one crew tactically inferiour ? Hand the tactics and decisions to the other, even when that means that the crew becomes the leader on the boat and the skipper the one that follows directives.

Is one crew getting nervous and feels to much in edge. Start talking to eachother and call out any action, reasons for decisions and projected path. This will often quickly settle the other down even when things get hairy.

If a women stays nervous then simply back-off and sail around the situation. When given time she will proces the specifics of the situation you just avoided and find a opening where she is comfortable with and in one of the next times she will surprise you by not backing-out in one of the next times. If you then keep your actions clear and controlled she will reinforce the trust she places on you and not back-off ever again in similar situation.

For the men, Trust needs to be earned and KEPT ! The one thing every male part of a mixed crew should learn is to never betray the trust of the female part. For them the trust that you'll be dependable and responsible is a very important part of their whole way of sailing. It is often, in my experience, what they use to overcome the limits they feel. They are not really shaken by bad luck, but they are really upset by irresponsible actions resulting in damages or injury. As a men you have the responsibility to always sail clean, never curse and make well founded decisions and balance gains to risks. You won't believe how far this will boost your mixed crew performance.

For coaches of all female teams these points in a way are the same. You are a ladder they use to get up in performance in different ways than men do. If a coach doesn't realize this then the gains are most likely (very) limited. This is also a reason why female coaches often don't work that much better. Men often don't respect them and women see their own limits reflected in them. It is actually extremely difficult to be a female coach supporting an all-female crew in a sport like this. Mostly because you'll need an exceptionally accomplished sailor for your female trainees to respect you unconditionally. Then of course women are women among themselfs and that is a whole world into itself. I don't understand it but I have seen the outward visible ripples of it. For some reason women and men react to eachother in more controllable ways in relationships like that. Sadly female coaches and male teams are even worse because the men often simply don't respect the woman in roles like that. That is our bad.

I think there is more genetic and cultural imprint then we often accept. Working cleverly around or even with that is I feel the road to gains. Not doing that will always result in the female crews underperforming in the male dominated sports.


Wouter

Just my 2 cents..

for the Lasers part, I think Bill Roberts is right. The sailarea is to large for the average woman to be competitive.

I have seen some mixed teams in the 49'ers, but not many, and none at the highest levels. Altough the 49'ers have a weight equalizing system, allowing larger 'wings' for lighter teams.

The Tornado also has few mixed teams, but there has been (and are) some great teams there (the Scaceys come to mind, altough there probably are several others). For a pure female team, a T is very heavy to handle on the ground. We weight in at 170Kg's, and sometimes have to struggle to get it up the ramp. Ours is a lousy ramp, with a 10 cm step at the bottom on low tide and lots of slime, but anyway..

My sister crewed for me at the swedish championship this year. She was a international top level wrestler in the 68Kg class up til some years ago. While sailing, her biggest problem was sheeting in the chute, she needed some help there from time to time. We also had to make an effort to get the boat up the ramp in Malmø after sailing.
I would guess that she is a bit stronger than the average female.

She had never sailed before, but absolutely loved it, and would love to do some more T sailing. She was attracted to the general speed and excitement of the Tornado, and of course she loves to compete.

We also got lots of positive comments for sailing as a mixed crew!

In my experience females likes to compete as much, or more, then us males. But for some reason they dont come out racing if they has to sail as skipper ? It also seems to me like they want to be reasonably sure that they will do good before they race against men ?
I have heard some say that sailing is a very technical sport, and that males enjoy technical stuff more than women. I dont think that is the reason..
Sailing can be quite testosterone packed at times (starting, protest situations etc) and some are perhaps deterred by this ?
I dont *know* all this, it's just some impressions I have got! As females are getting more and more agressive, I guess this will spread to sailing as well. Hopefully this will be positive for the sport of sailing.


I would like to hear your toughts Mary, as I would love to see more girls racing at our club!

If you have answers to some other great mysteries as well..

1: Why dont more women sail ?
2: Why is sailing dominated by white people ?
3: Why is sailing percieved as a 'closed' sport to outsiders ?
4: Why are multihulls not regarded as proper sailboats ?

(Dont get me wrong here, I'm not making a point. I really want to hear some opinions)

Wouter: We are switching to two rachet blocks on the spi now, as we dont want to bust our hands completely. It's not the muscle, but the hands can't take it without swelling when the wind is up.

Another comment. There are some large changes in western culture (and asian) just now. Young women do not want to start a family, they prefer to stay free and without kids. This is happening all over the western countries, and the demographics in Spain and Italy show some really bad trends. Bad in the sense that financing social security and pensions might be impossible as there will not be coming generations to tax.. (Again, dont get me wrong. Women are of course entitled to make their own choices!)


Good post!

Hi Mary,
I will only talk technical things with you on the subject of male vs female sailing contests. I'm not going to go to those "other places".
Mary said," It does not have to do with whether they are heavy enough to hold the boat down".

Mary,
The mechanics of the situation have very much to do with why men and women don't compete against each other in the high performance boats. Women don't compete against men in the Laser class because they can't hold the boat down. Give the women a trapeze on the Laser against men hiking and women can be competitive.
The biggest single problem with the concept of "one design sailboat racing" is that people are not one design. Yet the two things that have the greatest effect on boat speed and race outcome are" 1.sail area to weight ratio and 2. righting moment to sail area ratio. Both of these two basic performance parameters are highly influenced by "sailors weight". As the boats get lighter, the effect becomes greater. This is why in windsurfing contests there are weight divisions.
As beach catamarans become lighter and lighter, the effect of sailor's weight will become more pronounced because sailor's weight makes up a larger fraction of the total system weight. Maybe someday we will have weight divisions in beach cat racing but I hope not.
Bill.


By the way, I was wrong in my former post -- the three sailing classes that are Open to both men and women are Laser, 49er and Tornado. [/quote]

Bill, you are begging the question, and Wouter and Rolf are getting close to the answer but dancing around it.

>>Another comment. There are some large changes in western culture (and asian) just now. Young women do not want to start a family, they prefer to stay free and without kids. This is happening all over the western countries, and the demographics in Spain and Italy show some really bad trends. Bad in the sense that financing social security and pensions might be impossible as there will not be coming generations to tax.. (Again, dont get me wrong. Women are of course entitled to make their own choices!)


My last female crew, with whom I enjoyed racing alot, was a doctor, earned more than I did, will never have kids and is as free minded as Ernest Hemmigway. She is to the left of me politically and more active as well. Right now she is in Africa working in a hospital. I fear she won't be back soon.

Still despite these changes in western society and western womenhood she displayed a lot of the symthomes I described Earlier (apart from the one about creating a family.)

For this reason and others I'm not a big believer in the Western myth about "women catching up to men and being the same".

One reason is that men and women will never be the same and both of them really don't want to as well.

The other reasons is that is ignores obvious genetic based differences only to be politically correct or whatever. This ignores doing things better. Women are definately better in several things than men and the same goes the other way around. It is also more fun discovering who does what best and how you can devided tasks so that the team is better still.

Also I've been around long enough to know that not everything is culture based. There are quite a few things that are genetically encoded or that body build has stimulated to develop in a different direction.

I also think there is absolutely no problem with "a womans choice" Afterall they are as hard pressed to ignore their genetic imprint as much as men are with theirs. We as a people will survive no matter what culture we live in.

And of course young men and young women will say alot of things and then get hooked up with eachother at a later age anyway. It is the way of the world and the universe even. Just like how the 60's couldn't destroy the institude of marriage. The people at that time were foolish to believe that the even could endanger it. An union of that shape and meaning is to much inbedded in our psyche and genetic codes although its outward look may change over time and geographically.

In short; I don't think that the "large changes in western culture" will make women more physical or significantly change their unique way of looking at life and sports for that matter.

Wouter

In that case tell us your answer please. I wonder what it is as most possible answers have be named now I think. And I don't by the theory that there is a conspiracy of men or something preventing women from doing well when they set their minds to it.

Wouter

Bill,

There is some more factors that hurt women in regards to boat speed that I have'nt seen mentioned yet. Here goes:

Been doing some Laser coaching for some of our local hotshots, men and women, and doing some from the back video
to help sort out differences upwind. We paired up boats
choosing competeters of approx the same weight and height.

Factors that really hurt women:

For a given body weight, women TEND to be shorter than men.
Most classes don't measure height, but really should. This is hugh in total righting moment.

Also, we found that when we had a pair approx. equal height and weight man and woman racing against each other the men seemed always to have better upwind speed. Even when we felt that the woman had better (flater) hiking form. We attibute this to the weight distribution difference between the mans body and the womens body. Ever done that old party
trick of step an arm length from the wall and bend over until your head is against the wall? Women can stand up from this position and men can't. Men have a significantly higher CG. Even in the 15-17 year old group we were working with.

This is a big deal in a Laser, but the effect should abate as we boats get wider, right?


The generalizations about womens competitive fire: Wouter is going it alone there, I'm married.
Mark L