sparky wrote:So according to your assertion,the FD would never have had the carbon mast,( much more fragile than alu ),the centreboard and rudder carbon made,to use carbon as a building material.
At last european championship in Croatia,almost all crews had carbon mast, more expensive than alu (double price than alu)and no more performant than alu in light wind,the same for centreboards and rudders (more expensive than wood or vtr).
I'm not sure I quite see how you are connecting the use of laminates with the decision to use carbon for other elements of the boat. Yes the use of carbon in masts and foils is a little more expensive, a lot more in the case of the mast, but more fragile? perhaps a little in the early stages, but masts are developing and soon they will not be.
As I see it masts and foils etc are a seperate issue as generally you only buy them once. unless there is some catastrophic incident. And then you might claim from an insurance. Sails are considered (By the look of this thread anyway) a disposable item, new sails every year! (My newest sail is 5 years old and is still being worn in. nevertheless it makes sails a different issue to foils and masts.)
sparky wrote: I remind you that the classic boat like Finn,5o5,and many others use laminate sails since much time and the evolution of materials in those classes is gone symmetrically in both directions,for mast and sails.
Why you use Kevlar or Dyneema sheets? You can use polyester ropes.............and wood boom........
The classic boats like the 505 and finn have got laminates and carbon and yes they have developed in a symetrical fashion as you say. However I would consider those classes very different. the finn is a singlehander, no slot aerofoil to worry about just one big sail, so laminate makes perfect sense. The 505 has moved to laminates and allows them on both head and main sails as have the fireballs, the common thread here is that they have a large main and a small jib. So the main takes more of the load upwind and the jib takes (I would asume) much less abuse through the tacks than the FD's genoa. The laminate stability on the main is therefore an advantage for the 505, however given the amount of the FD main that is backwinded by the genoa upwind I question what advantage puting a laminate up would give. As Toby says, lets test and find out, I am more than willing to be proven wrong on this point.
As for laminate genoa I would think that it would provide advantage untill you had run it in and out of the furler a few times and tacked with it. After that I would suspect it would degrade much faster than a dacron sail. Again though, more than willing to be proven wrong, lets go and test them.
sparky wrote:Only in FD the sails remained at 40 years ago for a reason that I can not understand,although the constant evolution that occurred in the class in the last 30 years.
I'm not saying to change the spirit of the boat,no changes at sailplan,no bigger spinnaker,no idrofoils,no gennaker, but to bring the boat to the current technology in all and not just for certain things,without looking for excuses not supported by facts.
I support the idea of developing the class with modern tech etc. However I don't like the, "everyone else has done it so we should too" argument. There are things that work for some but not others. We have to remember that the FD rig is something of a design cul-de-sac in dinghy racing. If the massive overlapping genoa was a excelent idea in terms of dinghy rigs then more boats would have them. As such comparing the FD to boats of a similar speed (505's) is only of limited usefulness in gauging what would work on the FD. We have to test the innovation, and I suspect we would find problems in the FD that the 505 doesn't have. This doesn't mean we should not do it, it just means we need to be careful about testing innovations like laminate sails in our fleet. Only then will we know if it is a good idea to adopt them within our fleet.
sparky wrote:If you use the same old dacron,why to use a carbon mast? Why to spend so much money for a carbon mast without having all benefits? I find it a contradiction or a non sense...
Why are we using that old sail technology? engines have been around for over a century now.
Spending money on sailing on every possible level a ridiculous thing to do, but we do it anyway.
There has to be a line drawn in the rules somwhere, I look at the rules and I rationalise it as modern tech carbon etc for every long term purchase item and stick with cheaper, and yes older technology for the disposable items on the boat. I'm happy with that as a rationale for the rules. But it is an area where there is no real right answer, just thats where the line is at the moment.
sparky wrote:FD is not a poor class , or at least in countries where the class is still very much alive like Germany,Nederland or Italy, nobody is having trouble to changing masts, centreboards,rudders or sails, if all this will be more performant.
However large rule changes are likely (I would think) to cause the smaller fleets to contract and become less competitive in international competition doing overall damage to the world fleet. potentially contracting the competition back to the few nations: ESP, GER, ITA, NED. There are a number of one boat fleets out there, and a number of fleets that have only a handful of boats, these are likley to be damaged by big rule changes.
sparky wrote: I think the sailmakers have little desire to invest in a class that in their home countries is less common and the political supremacy of certain countries don't permit to others to pursue new projects.
If there are certain countries not permitting developments then start the research development somwhere else and show them how well it works. Once it looks like a better idea than the ones they have had then it'll get tried really quickly. Thats how to get any idea moving forward surely? If no one is willing to try the ideas then perhaps there is some indication of how desirale the idea is to start with. Big Ideas often take one determined person to get them going... so lets see some testing data.
sparky wrote:What do you think Mr.Mader would say if tomorrow will arrive someone who could build an FD more performant at a lower cost? Maybe in fiberglass.........
Does this really matter to this discussion? Mr Mader is one supplier, yes he is a big one, but does he have any more affiliation to the FD class than any other builder, sail maker, chandler or foil maker? The best product should be bought, be it Mader or not. He as a commercial entity should understand that and as such he has created the best product for a number of years. If someone better comes along and Mader cannot improve his product then thats just tough.
Frankly if another builder of FD's wewre to truely challenge Mader dominance then it should be better for the class as it would promote competition for customers. and competition breeds better deals for the customer. So why not encourage it?
