Marry! Methinks thou taketh thyself for a wag?
'tis already in the making - thy jester's apparel doth thee great injustice when thou uttereth truth thus....
'tis a pitty she's a skiff.. (Sorry William)
re "noncing the 12"
"many commercial training centres might be interested."
....or they might not. Many epithets might describe the 12, but are 'stable' and 'forgiving' amongst them?
Making the 12 into a twelve foot skiff sounds great though. ........except that you can go out and buy one already an any degree of skiffness you fancy: ie
not extreme - laser mango or RS wango
slightly extreme - 29er
extreme - cherub
very extreme - 12 foot skiff
Perhaps the cobbler should stick to his (or her) last. Other classes such as Albacores don't seem to feel the need for kite but as a class seem very buoyant.
I can't help but laugh. Exactly 20 years ago Rob Peebles designed and I came up with a marketing plan for the "Quantum Dinghy".
I quote from the original business plan;-
... 1/2 price of any dinghy of comparable performance
... can be adapted to meet requirements of crew .. two sail, singlehanded or three sail
... boat supplied ready to go
... vacuum formed
... space frame system
... self draining cockpit
The idea was that you had a cheap mass produced vacuum formed hull and you just bolted in different module space frames to vary the geometry for each sailing mode.
We had a plastics wizz who was working on a Richard Rogers project with Rob at the time who had the structures sorted.
Unfortunately the plug makers were from the automotive industry and failed to deliver a fair plug, if they had, I suspect (hope) that we would have been too ahead of the times.
Anyway the easiest way to make a small fortune in the marine industry is to start with a large one!
I should add that there were no Topper or Laser or RS two man boats of any note at that time.
Good times.
David
N3461
The Albacores seem a friendly bunch - they have a similar philosophy to the 12s.They say that an Albacore is very versatile without compromising its performance. So while it's quicker than a Laser, it's not so cumbersome as a Wayfarer..... A bit like us eh? :D
Ted, the Albacores were considering using our Dangly-Pole system in 2000. Do you know if they adopted it permenantly?
Cheers!
Jim N3130 and 3470 (No longer ranting on....)
Jim,
'wot no woody epithet?' ...or should than be snowclone?
Philip
N3253
[quote by=Jimbo41 link=Blah.cgi?b=Cool,m=1163667720,s=4 date=1163682388]
Ted, the Albacores were considering using our Dangly-Pole system in 2000. Do you know if they adopted it permenantly?
Cheers!
Jim N3130 and 3470 (No longer ranting on....)[/quote]
Yes, I did a couple of years crewing on one. Very useful thing, the dandly pole, but very annoying as it whangs about. Never found a reliable system for automatically restraining it tho. The main reason to have a carbon dangly pole is that it is quieter!
TC
The 29er is a bargain. It operates in the same sort of crew weight area as the 12, is relatively tippy and downwind likes to nosedive in big gusts if the crew are a bit slow. It is a very nicely designed boat.
The draw back is that it doesn't like shallow water (having a dagger board and rudder) and being fairly swift is best on large expanses of water. Dodging between moored yachts (or flocks of learners in their picos) with the kite up is very stressful.
Horses for courses.
A skiff is a lightweight boat. I had a rowing skiff once. :P
Now though, in this context, how about - a sailing dinghy light and powerful enough to plane upwind in the majority of wind conditions?
Examples: 18 and 12 foot skiffs, int 14s, cherubs and int moths would qualify,
isos, laser4000 and n12 wouldn't.
TC
In my experience of interwebnet discussion and that, it is best not to suggest anything is a skiff unless it's Orstralian and known by numbers alone...
I've seen people get quite upset when it is suggested that something else is called a skiff.... :P
Even if it's Orstralian and designed by a Bethwaite....
Does Skiffy the Bush Kangaroo qualify then? :P
Kean
Need to be Skiffy the 18 or 12 foot Kangaroo......
Honest, I've seen people who don't consider 14 and 16 ft skiffs to be skiffs....
What's a 16 foot skiff when its at home (in Oz presumably)? I've seen all the others. Must do a web search.
Isn't offending people who have narrow minds the purpose of webchat? Perhaps I'm missing something.
TC
Just looked. Looks exciting, but looks like any other xx foot skiff. ie several large men with large testicles on trapezes. I note that there also appears to be a 13 foot skiff. Is there a 15 foot skiff too, I wonder.
TC
nope! There is the 6ft, R class, 12ft, 13ft, 16ft and 18ft skiffs, i guess UK and AUS Cherubs are skiffs too, and maybe a moth! 'Skiff' is such a vague word!
I believe skiffy the Kangeroo has 2 feet ::) ::) ::)
The webshots of men (and perhaps girls - excepting those with the large testicles Ted :B) on the longer skiffs remind me of the Tiller Girls where they all look very elegant in their longlegged lizardsuits everything seems to be fast and streamlined.
But I've seen 49ers on the Ammersee and when there's little to no wind, the boats and crews together look like caddis flies stuck by surface tension, trying to keep the relatively narrow hull form from heeling.....
Hmmm. Pass the Skiff (OOOPS! :o :B)
Jim N3130 and 3470 (Wood - still does as it should)
All this chat about what is and is not a skiff and who should have designed it is rather reminiscent of Uffa Fox and his Flying 15, not to mention Flying 12, Flying 20 and the rest
;)
My B14 is classed as a Skiff but one without wires. We just have HUGE tramps lovely to lie on whilst hurtling along. Having spent rather a long afternoon last week mastering the spinnaker on the skiff....sorry B14.....I've come to the conclusion that the National 12 would be awsome with a spinnaker...has anyone ever tried to sail a 12 with a spinnaker and why can't we have one??....class rules I guess, and the fact we'd beat the S**t out of all those Merlins. I'd give it a go on our Crusader but I'm scared of breaking the mast!!
Janey
A few years ago someone did try an asymetric on a Chapter, I cannot remember who or even when. All I do recall is that it was around the time that asymetrics became vogue and that it was set from the hounds area. Things did not go that well, but was that due to a 12 being great without a kite or did the kite need to be larger....... Someone out there is bound to know more than me.
Even further in the past John Royce stuck his Fireball rig on his Tiger and sailed it for a laugh at Trent Valley, in which race I have no idea, but do remember seeing pictures in Y&Y. Now that would have been something to see
:)
Was it not Nigel Waller in Ella Grunge.... I could be horribly wrong....
[quote by=Mike_Day link=Blah.cgi?b=Cool,m=1163667720,s=21 date=1163784018]
I wonder why we keep on talking about this? 12s downwind in a blow are exciting and hard enough to control anyway. They're wonderful boats generally to sail in any conditions. For the additional thrill we'd have with a kite in the narrow wind band of marginal planing, we'd lose in all kinds of other areas, and I reckon the Class would disappear within a generation.
Mike D
N3496[/quote]
I guess the success of the RS200 and it's impact on the N12 fleet makes people think about the kite.
We sailed the RS200 for 3 years on the circuit and when you do a winward leeward all the time quite a lot of the time you are soaking low for VMG as the kite is not big enough to get the apparent wind forward like on the Musto so much of the downwind the crew is sitting in.
With the N12 you can reach and I guess you race courses with reaches which make for a nice bit of entertainment.
One of the reasons we brought the N12 was the lack of kite as we will have limited (no) practice time ...
Rick
The Kite from Mike Shallows experiment ended up as the jib/kite swap on Ella Grunge...
Decent (400 sized at least) Kite and a loss of lead would be massively fun. I would have one!
[quote by=tedcordall link=Blah.cgi?b=Cool,m=1163667720,s=9 date=1163704394]
- a sailing dinghy light and powerful enough to plane upwind in the majority of wind conditions?
... n12 wouldn't.[/quote]
Do Nationals not plane upwind then? There are Cherub designs, notably the Bistro, which will plane upwind before the crew is properly on the wire, and you'd think the N12 has that amount of righting moment and more being so much wider. But maybe an N12 that sort of shape would be a disaster in all sub planing conditions.
They do plane, but you need at least 21 stone in to get it to work! And it doesnt work in the majority of wind conditions either, force 4 plus.
My short lived experience of sailing with Mr Simpson in my old boat in the harbour race at Weymouth saw this. We easily had the front foot 1/2 of the boat out of the water upwind - werent pointing but going considerably quicker than everyone around us. I think we got to the windward mark 3rd, just behind my old man who was presumably doing the same thing as he has even more pies... He cocked up the jibe, we didnt and then Mark fell out the boat trying to avoid him! :D
A reduction in weight would help bring this down the condition range a bit and for lighter people to do it too... :P
Ted
Always thought skiffs were a big load of bollocks!
Roger
Though it may be an illusion caused by skin tight lycra!