Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

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Michael Brigg
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Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Michael Brigg »

Call me a luddite, but for me it's rather depressing...

http://www.sailingworld.com/future-foiling
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Rupert »

Usual nonsense, mistaking the extreme for the norm.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by trebor »

Never take off, excuse the pun.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by davidh »

Sadly I fear that there is some real 'writing on the wall' worries about this!
It's forming part of yet another article that I'm working on, plus some work with the Beeb! But if you look at pre-war dinghy sailing, it tended to be elitist. Then we had Jack Holt, who did so much to democratize the sport.

Now, sadly, the big E word, as in elite, is creeping ever more back into the sport. The modern crop of dinghies, super light, wildly over canvased, are great if you can dedicate lots of time to you sport and when you're not sailing, you're in the gym, cycling or whatever.

I got into a lot of hot water a while back by asking if one of the new breed of single handers was the 'boat for the elite or a-lot'? Okay, I accept that I'm always happy to use a soundbite, but there is a lot of relevance to all of this. Making the sport more exciting to the new generation, with their 15 minute attention span - where everything appears up on line.....yep, foiling, for them, might well be the future.

Could be that the classic scene will be the last resting place of the current generation of sailors.

D
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by ent228 »

I like the idea of continuous monitoring of boats speeds and headings to get a fair handicapping. It would remove a lot of those tredious and pointless forum posts on other lesser sites.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by trebor »

David,
I think you need more than a 15 minute attention span to master a foiling moth.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by SoggyBadger »

trebor wrote:David,
I think you need more than a 15 minute attention span to master a foiling moth.
Exactly.
Best wishes


SB
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by davidh »

I couldn't agree more about the input needed to not only master foiling but many of the new breed of boats.

If you read my posting above you'll see that my comment refers to the short attention span generation and is not sailing specific. 20-20 cricket, changes to the way golf is played (to 'speed up the action'), ditto tennis are all examples of how sports are having to re-invent themselves to fit into this new way of thinking about things. I've been to several 'gigs' recently and wonder if anyone actually watches what is happening on stage, or if they ever watch the jerky hand held footage that they've taken, missing out on the full experience as they do so.

This isn't just grumpy old man-ism but a cold and calculated look at how a line of progression is changing our perceptions of sport and entertainment, blurring the boundaries between the two. Let's just pause and look at what is going on in Bermuda. It is the most exciting sailing you'll see on tv (note that I said, "see on TV") but that is what it is produced to be. A small elite (some 30 or so sailors) at the pinnacle of a vast commercial enterprise. Will that ultimately change the sport of dinghy sailing? Of course it will, for at the same time, we had live coverage of the World Sailing Finals from Santander. Watch the Finn race! It was absorbing and involved some great tactical sailing - I loved it. But was it a tele-visual experience - no, not really.

I'll leave you with two final thoughts. I was an after dinner speaker at a yachting event when I gave my 'Slow Death of fast Dinghy Sailing' talk - pretty much along the lines of some of the views expressed here. Did I get shouted down - not a bit and what is more, some fairly big hitters from the world wide administration of the sport both chipped in during the following Q&A by saying that anyone who thought that the Olympics were about the competitors was today sadly mistaken.

The other thought; hearing Bill Gates talk, back when international telecoms was my real job. As he said - must be 25 years ago now, "make the most of it as before long, bandwidth will be free. Instead, content will be king" Look at how many phone deals are structured and you see how right he was; Content is now king! Foiling cats (or moths) or the changes that will soon take hold in F1 - the content has to have global appeal and be easily packable into easily digested pieces. 5 day Test matches, 5 hour tennis matches and the like......will one day be history and, if we're not careful, so will a lot of the sport we know today

D
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Rupert »

Slow cooking didn't die with the advent of fast food. It took a hit, but then reinvented itself. Records are making a comeback over downloads, bought, I expect, by the same people who cook properly! Sport will be the same. Fast packaged shortened events for watching on your phone, but hours or days long sports for those who want to do it properly.

Sailing works pretty well in both formats when taking part, but isn't much of a spectator sport either way. This AC has got pretty damn close, though. Shame I can no longer see it, as it seems you now need to sign up properly, and I'm too mean.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by trebor »

I can only speak for my club, all new members/new sailors have purchased old boats from established classes, price I suppose, find out if they like the sport. I can't see this changing any time soon.

The foiler featured in first post, who has ever seen a RYA level 1 or 2 graduate move straight to a boat like that.

I have now met many sailors who I like to watch sail, they seem to find wind in a drifter, our sailing secretary is virtually a guaranteed winner, he had zero interest in this boat when I showed to to him, his comment was "you still race against other foilers and go round a course, why waste the money" his opinion obviously.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Rupert »

I've known people go from level 2 to sailing Buzzes, Isos and the like. Sometimes it has even worked. Provided the foiler doesn't fall over easily, why not learn that way if you want to?

Interestingly, my auto correct changes foiler to toilet...
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by trebor »

Would be interesting to find out how many sailing clubs in Britain have water big enough for foilers and other exotica, this would show size of market and how likely they are to decimate normal dinghies.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Rupert »

I think we can rule out Whitefriars and Sandwell Valley, but plenty of space on the sea! The next stop is France, Germany, Iceland or America, of course, but foilers are well known for their seaworthiness. I believe there is a wonderful stretch of coast in Namibia we could all flock to.

Mind, Charlie is off to Mar Menor in Spain for work experience with Pro Vela in August, and I'm pretty sure he will get foiling there. Possibly that is the mainstream foiling future, rather than ownership?

Plenty of room for everything, provided people who should know better stop running down one section of the sport to push their vision of another.
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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by Ed »

I think you would be surprised....

We have had Int Moths on Roadford sailing smallish courses.

They can sail on quite small bits of water....the problem is they sail different lines to normal boats and of course are fast, so they do run out of room sooner for sure and fill the lake that much sooner. So, a few moths are ok, but the lake gets busy much quicker with a few on the lake.

But to be honest, they are not much more of an annoyance than a few fast windsurfers, but they are bad enough.

Lets face it, kiteboards would be way worse!

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Re: Blue sky thinking or Dark and Stormy days ahead?

Post by davidh »

It matters not one jot to me if it is a passing comment on here or a full blown 4000 word article, I am always scrupulous in my attention to detail. In this I ensure that it isn't my own agenda that I'm writing about but reporting what I see - that is, after all, what I am paid to do.

In this case my observations are that once again, there is a 'top down' drive, aimed at moving the sport in a certain direction. We've seen this process in action before, with the way in which at youth level crewing in a 2 person boat has taken a back seat to helming a single hander. And yes, the RYA does hold glitzy meetings with the media and the trade and the so called 'stadium events' figure highly in this. It is therefore a valid reply to Michael's original post that foiling could well be a future direction for the sport to take; conventional boating could be moved out more to the margins in the way the old gaffers operate today. We're not talking this year or the next but in sowing the seeds for the next generation.

As someone who works hard observing what is happening and who marvels at the technological advances (wishing at times to be 30 years younger) I just wish I had more good news about the backbone of the sport to report.

It is also sad that having returned to posting on this forum - given the opportunities that will arise next year and in 2019, that I'm once again sniped at from the 'inside' - I've never been an insider here and never will be. Were I to reply in the same way, I'd very quickly get an email telling me to desist or be thrown off the forum. So I'll just retire as off now and leave you to it....
D
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