why is this fast?

Once again... I ask... Why is this fast? Every event they publish a new photo of a N17 jumping out of the water... Great visual... but... racers probably want to know.... WHY IS THIS FAST?.... and.... How was the landing?..

My answer... It's not fast! but the N17 is half baked... so the best of the world... make do.... Its the same for everyone!

What's your answer?

another crew learning to tame the beast


Again I ask you......

if they are so "bad" then why in God's name isn't there a photo of EVERY crew doing this ???

or are the photographers only snapping pics of the crews that haven't as yet adjusted to the N17 ???




N17..... just another step down the evolutionary road

Mark,

Have you sailed on one before?

JC says that it is his most favorite boat to sail. Its challenging and rewarding.

Again Mark how many regattas have you sailed the boat?

OMG .....



& we should have banned these things years ago.....

IIRC, the shot of the H14 has the man himself on the tiller.

The boat was selected by the Olympic sailors who sailed them during the equipment trials. I'm sure you have a conspiracy theory all locked and loaded for that response, but I really don't see the world ending over this...

Mike

The way I understand it is that on the N17 when you make a mistake you jump loosing a few boat lengths as opposed to pitchpoling, I haven't seen many shots of a pitchpole. I think the whole concept is fantastic and I will probably have one down the track

There is a great quote in the French training de-brief here here about at what stage the crew has to just jump clear.

no, it isn't fast to luff the sails, but it is slow if you tip over.
scarecrow, thanks for the link. That channel has all kinds of informative videos. The one that followed the nacra vid told all about the 18 skiff worlds and lead into the aussie challenge for the AC.
As for jumping off the boat; is that even true? i have always told my crew to hold on and don't get separated from the boat.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...b.476729645680245&type=2&theater

here is a couple pitchpoles

How about the courage of those sailors, all the other classes didn't race and they were trying to pull the spins out. It gets my heart rate up watching the vid and makes me want one even more. I have had to jump as far as I can to leeward a couple of times in big wind because the wind on the tramp pushes the boat so fast that I have smacked my head a couple of times coming up. I don't think I would bother jumping if it was going over backwards because I think that would be pretty slow anyway

I don't understand why they want to go 'half assed' when it comes to foiling. If they want to do it, why not just pick a full on foiling cat and do it right? Is the Nacra 17 that much cheaper than a Flying Phantom?

As if money were the deciding factor in any Olympic racing class...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5doBIv3TVbA

Hi Mark,
I strongly advice you to chat with the teams who sail the 17 (rather than basing your opinion on press photos) when it comes to the speed, performance and excitement of the 17.....it is a real test of sailing skills and fitness.......better still get someone to take you out on one.....I guarantee you will understand then!

Hi Timbo,
Worth you while checking out the selection of 2016 equipment and what the choices were and how the evaluation process went (one of the criteria was cost)......the FP was supposed to be at the trials but wasn't ready....given we are now 18 months into the olympic 4 year cycle and still there is no 3 sail production catamaran suitable for a mixed team being delivered (the F20 C FCS would most definitely not be suitable for a mixed team of between 120kg and 140 kg!) I am not sure what your suggestion would be instead of the 17?

well, in a nutshell, if all racing in the entire world was COMPLETELY about speed nobody would be racing sailboats anyway.

It's also the same reason I get enjoyment out of racing a 6 knot **** box J22 - it's definitely NOT about speed. It's about challenge. It's about using your skill and body to beat the other guy who also happens to be racing the same craft with the same identical limitations.

No, popping wheelies isn't the fastest way to get around the race course...clearly. But given the fact that it's so wildly photographed, that alone means that people see it as an exciting aspect of the N17 - photographers capture it and people like to see it...all of that is good for the sport, good for multihulls, and good for the N17.

Jake, Why do you think it is good for the sport?

When you see gran prix skiers... going like hell.... you say... wow... that is some Hill and those guys are great skiers for doing that.... It is never about the skis. The universe of skiers grows as skiers take on the challenge of increasingly bigger hills.. It's about the hill and the skill to dominate it.

When you see other boats..... they are sailing in a seaman link way... Boats don't routinely pop wheelies! I think the public says... wow... look at that crazy boat.... those guys are intense. Sailing is now an extreme sport... That may be good for the 20 secs of TV time... but I don't see extreme sports growing in popularity... they remain small niches for the adrenalin junkie. Sailors look at those pics and say... That boat is just not right.. It should not do that time and time again... just for the benefit of sailing photographers and photo editors.. They ask... How is that fast... I thought the game was racing the other guys as fast as you can...


(I say... Fix the damn boat)

Nacraman, The old pros insisted that the Marstrom Tornado was the best two man cat package on the water... Easy to sail... a true challenge to sail well, a boat suitable for the olympics.. The Marstrom 20 raised the bar by cutting weight and updating the design for a Windward Leeward racer.... The N17 is the culmination of the fiasco that demanded mixed teams and not open.. and locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever. This selection process is the result of compromise... The N17 looks like its harder to sail and obviously a true challenge to sail flat and well. Fix the boat so that its easy to sail, aka a good boat, and it will remain an Olympic boat... (Hell.... the venerable laser is the Olympic boat and so the point is... the equipment is not determinative)

Any of the other boats in the trials would have worked... Its about the sailing.. not the boat. Those boats are mature and proven designs. The focus would be on the racing. That is what the olympics calls for.

The N17 was incomplete and not tested... The rig was a complete failure and replaced with something solid... the foil package is half done... the boat needs to evolve to a stable package.. T foil rudders and move the board positions) In short it needs to be fixed. The only time anyone should comment on the boat is when they are looking for the class name for the results sheet..

Today...the story remains... look at that crazy boat popping a wheelie. (again) Far too many regatta stories have a N17 wheelie photo!

Mark,the Tornado is gone, over, irrelevant. I would much rather have seen the Tornado come back because it's something I could have sailed with my current crew. But constantly looking back at that boat and time isn't going to help progressing what we have now which is a great multihull olympic class.
If you insist that open is the way to go you are irrelevant as well. Yes there have been some teams that have had a hard time with the mixed concept and others that were dissapointed. But how can you argue with the numbers and activity going on in this class? Personally I think it's great. Look at the caliber of sailors it's attracted from other classes that had no other option until now.
How can you use the word "fiasco"? And how can you say in good authority that it has "locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever."?
The photo in question is of Frank Cammas... I'm pretty sure he knows what's fast.
Mark, you have no idea when this was, some of the 17 sailors do this for fun between and after races. That's why (like in this photo) there are rarely other boats around. I'm guessing there is only a marginal condition where boards all the way down double trapped downwind is an advantage.
Yes we've seen it happen in videos during racing. Maybe those teams need to get their boards up sooner which is not a fault of the boat.

Fixed it for you.

No doubting the quality of the Tornado (I learnt to sail cats on a Tornado and it is the only boat that I own and I love it!)......but as you said it is a "two man cat package" and the olympic requirement for 2016 is a mixed team boat suited to that 120kg to 140kg weight range (and that rules the big T out).......the Marstrom 20 is/was a great boat, but really only one is now sailed in anger in Europe, and that is heavily modified with 12' beam, 3 sail rig, F20 C mast, curved raking boards (about to be converted to full foiling), t foil rudders and renamed as the Vampire (owned by a good friend of mine). The only Marstrom 20 original parts are the hulls and they have been heavily modified with replacement cases, etc....the rest of the European fleet have moved to F20 C's because it thrashes the standard Marstrom 20 (but thats a whole other story!)......now whether the mixed team criteria is a fiasco is something we could argue about till we are old and grey, it is how it is.......yes the 17 is a difficult boat to master without doubt and so it should be.....we are talking about top athletes at the top of their game.....you mentioned skying as an analogy to olympic sailing.....lets take a different analogy of the top end of motor car racing...F1 cars and Indy cars are a difficult test of driving skills that could be replaced with standard road cars that are "easy" to drive so drivers could concentrate their skills on tactics, etc......is that what we want?......if thats the case when applied to the sailing world we need to get rid of the 49er and the 49erfX as well as the 17!.....the selection of boats that are used as olympic equipment cover a broad range of sailing technique and skills....if you don't have the right skill to sail a 17 sail a laser, simple....

I still actively encourage you to speak to the US teams who sail the 17 at Olympic level about how they feel about the boat and strongly encourage you to go have a sail on a 17.....

Hi Mark,
When the trial happened it really was between the Viper and the 17.......none of the other boats really came close to those two in terms of selection to fit the ISAF/IOC criteria......interestingly I had a long chat with one of the GB squad sailors who also happens to be part of the family who sell the Viper in the UK and he has a clear opinion that the the 17 was the right choice! (and he had previously been in the GB squad on the T prior to it being dropped from the Olympics!)....as for the 17 not being tested and its initial rig issues, we could say the same about the 49er......would you want the 49er dropped from the Olympics now......there is possibly an argument for t foil rudders although there is also a strong argument not to tame the 17 with the addition of the t foil rudders!.....why do the boards need to be moved???.......

Press photos of 17 wheelies isn't a strong argument to change things otherwise pitch poling 49ers and all those broaching monos should have been removed from international competition a long time ago.......

I agree that the selection came down to a Viper and the N17. They had different strengths and weakness per the ISAF specs. The choice was clearly for a bigger boat and ISAF accepted the risk that the boat was not quite done. The technical committee failed to get the job completed.

So you note.... Taming the N17 with T foils and suggest that choosing not to do so is reasonable... I think that it is as unreasonable as telling the A class sailors to just man up and not put T foils on their C foiled DNA's... just because the pitch pole factor is more challenging. YMMV.

Why move the boards.... because all of the A class designers do what Melvin did and put the boards where the math tells them to... then a year later... they move them forward. So... its just a hunch. YMMV.

So, the 49ner team did extensive changes in the first two years to get the boat basically right.... Nacra was forced to redesign the rig and they did that after the breakages.... For some reason... they did not refine the boat in the same manner and to the same degree as the 49ner... That is my point... it is half baked... I don't know... maybe the politics of it all made them stop refining the boat... ISAF gave them a year to get it working and ... by definition... it was done after a year. The ISAF technical committee had a lot riding on the wisdom of picking this design and their judgement that this was the right design and they believed Melvin's mumbo jumbo... ... ERGO... the world nods their head....the boat is right after a year... I am the kid yelling.. hey mom... the emperor has no clothes... To me it looks pretty silly and lame for the boat to be jumping out of the water after the best in the world have sailed it for two years.

In choosing a SMOD boat that was unproven... the onus was on the ISAF and NACRA to get it right...

Time will tell... if the boat stays the same for the next quad... You guys were right... and I will acknowledge the error in my judgment... If they change it... The question should be... what the hell took so long and who is accountable.

I think Nacra will insist on changes because you probably have a hard time selling this kind of boat to the public high performance market... For reference, look at the F18HT class... Indeed it is a challenging boat to keep the pointy end up in a breeze... You could also say... the boat has bad to terrible manners. YMMV... nevertheless... challenging to sail does not make it appropriate for the Olympics.

Accountable?

I'm sorry, did I miss something here? Did someone die while sailing the N17? No? I didn't think so.

Accountable for what? Delivering a boat that all the sailors love, delivering a boat that is going to have great watchability on the olympic stage?

What axe are you grinding here Mark? Your usual nonsensical pontifications have some basis in legitimate criticism but this one seems to be "I don't like these pictures!"

Tornado > N17

*yawn*

I don't think they could change much this far into the cycle, probably when the next Olympics come up there will be mods on the boat. As for the Tornado going and mixed teams coming in it's worth reminding everyone that was the blindside by the US 2 votes and NZ 1 vote, Olympic reps they said they were voting for cats and voted it out. Now I'm just glad we're back in the Olympics

Why should I care whether this is fast or not?

Sail the boat before giving unsupported statements that the boat is half baked--dodn't repeat your arguments- sail it-sail it first- [or talk to someone who did [btw I did and it is the most exciting boat I've sailed... ever...]

Change the f'n record already. News Flash!!! You're never going to get out from behind the keyboard anyway and start training for the Olympics, so you shouldn't worry yourself with the new boat. Now go get yourself a new crossword puzzle book and get back to some real excitement.

Mark, I hope that you never - ever fly your hull above 300mm

.....because that's not fast and you shouldn't be out sailing if you do it

Ha look at my Avitar, that wasn't fast either

Maybe he secretly loves the boat and mixed discipline, and is just trying to see how much support they actually have?

Mike

That would be a Schneider move.

How many pitchpole photos do you see at big "regular beachcat" regattas?

That would be a good theoretical discussion on the size/scope/buying power of said "high performance market". I suspect many platforms might be hard to sell - foiling moth, 49er, FP.

Reasons may include the learning curve, entry cost, maintenance cost, small fleet size..

But perhaps this market segment (high performance) doesn't worry about those items that keep the platform out of the "public" realm?

+1 A quintessential devil's advocate. So much so, sometimes it's not even on purpose.

I'm new here, so please excuse my ignorance. Is this the half baked, poor performing boat we are talking about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pAxamg7DY0&index=23&list=PLlSeaiLpRdgyk60vMFNQYenmXjzksQeRy

If so, I will take one if someone is looking to get rid of theirs This video is sick, and I am amazed how they are handling that boat in the swells. It seems to pop off, land perfectly flat and effortlessly.

+1

+2

they do make it look easy, don't they?

You'd think a sailor that good could keep the boat steering straight over the water. Moving the tiller that much is so slow. Can't be the skipper's fault, since he's one of the best in the world. If he was sailing with another man, and the design wasn't such a joke, he'd be steering straighter. Nuke the mixed format, and get rid of this boat!!!

Do I sound like Mark yet? No, I left out grand conspiracy theories. It's too early...

Mike

Huh, Mike, did you ever sailed on a sea, I mean with waves.

The skipper in the vid is making minor steering alterations.
Perfect, at sea ther's never a straight line which is the fastest.

That's just one of the big differences between flat water sailing and sailing on waves. (And it's one of the attractions too)

Um, yeah. It was a JOKE!!! Note the reference to unspoken conspiracy theories...

Mike

That last video, and others make it look like a pretty nice boat.

I'm guessing the curved foils do unload the leeward hull some, it definintely doesn't get on the foils and foil however.

KInda looks like an F18 infusion- only lighter with a few steroids to boot! I'm going to get it for that comment, aren't I?

Yes the curved foils do push up the hull and make it plane!

That isn't necessary slower as foiling. Getting on a foil induces a great amount of drag and only if you can adjust the angle of attack of the foil (after you are foiling!) you might can go faster. ( =Reducing the drag and increasing the wingforce).

Besides that, planing on a full sea is dope.

Mike it was not conspiracy.... it was just arrogance followed by incompetence.

Why should anyone outside the olympic movement care?
Take a look at the existing and potential classes that are the future of cat racing.

Wave, Flying A class, Floating A class
or
Hobie 16, F16s, F18s, Nacra 17s, Flying Phantoms, Foiling Carbon 20s

What is the forecast for the future?.... Do we have small niche classes of the new designs... ... OR do we have sustainable classes that run for 40 plus years... Does a half baked N17 grow the sport or is it a missed opportunity?

I suspect that a well behaved foil assisted N17 would have a niche outside the Olympics. I hope they fix it as soon as possible for the good of the overall sport.

As for using Billy Beason... a top ten T sailor and now the top N17 sailor in the world to demonstrate the manners of the boat.... It is a great video... not very persuasive tho when others in the pro N17 fleet reliably get photographed popping a wheelie.

At the very least, The Olympics deserved a fully baked boat.... The Tornado class rules caused the best in the world to develop and refine the T to be a great boat over time... however this process also created fundamental issues with fairness of the competition...I admit this was a checkered history.... ISAF demanded an absolute requirement for a SMOD that they control..... So.... they had to get it right... Sadly, arrogance (the designer and builder can create a refined boat in less then two years )and incompetence, (ISAF will manage the process so that the boat is right and not cover their collective butts) is the result... So.. not a conspiracy... just your standard SNAFU. ISAF is happy because they are in total control and everyone has the same half baked boat but... they have fixed the integrity of the competition problem.

ps. since this is my personal pet peeve.... SOMETHING about the situation must bother so many people to comment. Hmm....

Glad you're back. The silence was starting to worry me.

I will agree that doing anything via committee can produce unanticipated results which may not be easily/ quickly changed. Compromises must be made, and some portion of the world will always be unhappy with the result. Where have we seen this before?

Mike

My only complaint with the introduction of the N17 is it further splintered the existing classes. I would've much rather seen the infusion chosen, or another boat that fit in a class.

Doesn't matter, it's done.

I'd love a 17, I think it would be a good boat for us. Only problems being that it's a Nacra and it's too damn expensive.

How's local support these days? That's gotta be a consideration too.

In New England it's fantastic. Rick Bliss is the man.

Just for you Mark

Phillip,
I dunno... that looks pretty fast to me.

Thanks... great boat porn!

Dear Nacra

Is this what they mean when they say,

"It was Stupid FAST!" ?

8-)

you have it right... emphasis on ..... stupid.... waterski moves off the boat is great boat porn.... fast... unless they are out front or dead last... hard to say if waterski moves are fast.. (NOT)

Personally.... I go with Bundy

Darren Bundock
Dear Nacra, when can we have some T rudders? She wants to foil upwind but needs a little lift in the rear.
Photo by Sander van der Borch Photography
— with Nina Curtis

The only real question here.,, is it ISAF and the technical committee covering their backside choosing a half baked boat telling the world how great it was???? ... OR is Nacra saving face by not fixing their half baked boat..(noting a good job fixing the mast)???

My gut tells me that it is ISAF... because Nacra needs/WANTS to sell these boats to the rank and file... I doubt those pics of stupid behavior help... (Any rec racers purchased one of these boats in NA yet???)

The image represents hard core seamanship in rough conditions. The reference to "stupid behavior" has no application in the case of this boat design.

Yes, the boat needs balance, but we have the next quad for NACRA to make the mods with ISAF approval, I'm sure.

We just need to be patient and enjoy the wealth of experience and depth of talent entering the Class.

will they be able to foil at the olympics given all the allegations of sh&t in the water?

So.... the answer to my question... ISAF or Nacra is pretty clear..... Gunnar Larsen responding to Bundy's snark

Gunnar Larsen
Hi Nina & Darren, Nacra 17 class is not a class to experiment with. We all know that. There is more parties involved, such as the Nacra 17 class, ISAF office and us the manufacturer. If the desire of the sailors is to spent some money on T-rudders or likewise solutions like stabilizers on the rudders. We already have the technology in place. Let's discuss this topic at the second Nacra 17 class meeting at the European championship in La grande Motte France in two weeks. Always open to talk and to recieve feedback ‪#‎empoweringsailors‬ Can you sent a formal request to the technical Nacra 17 class comite president?

Bundy acknowledges and then says ... Nothing happens until after Rio....

ISAF pooched this one.... Half baked....so they could prove they were the smartest ones in the room.... sigh....