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Report Sailing isn't suffering the same problems - by most accounts and even with a nasty little recession in much of the country, production sailboat manufacturers are still selling plenty of boats. So what's to be done to bring people back to the racing fold, and to attract new folks to racing? Print rags and websites are full of letters, forum topics, and editorials on how to improve the situation - some ridiculous, some useless, and some workable. We can (and do) debate the reasons for our predicament, but most will agree that there are three main reasons that preclude people from getting their asses to the race course: 1)
Time - Most people work longer hours than they did 20 or 30 years
ago. The average workweek has increased significantly for most North Americans,
especially among the well-educated. Sailors tend to have a much higher
level of education than average, and are hit hard by time constraints. After spending a weekend at the US Sailboat Show in Annapolis, I'm convinced that our salvation lies in what Justin Scott, Viper 640 Class President called "The Battle of the Twenties." THE SOLUTION There are now 6 true production sportboats available, or soon available, in the USA and Canada. They are all powered up, and will jump up on a plane downwind in anything approaching 15 knots of breeze. Their grin factor is huge, and they've got the sex appeal needed to attract younger sailors to the game, replacing the older sailors who are dying off or buying big cruisers and pimped out daysailors for their twilight years. They require between 2 and 4 crew, making crew management simple for even the most hated skipper. Builders are all offering discounts for multi-boat purchases, some substantial, and prices are low enough that clubs and like-minded racers can buy bunches of boats, creating that Holy Grail for the future of yacht racing - instant, local one-design fleets. Most importantly perhaps, they are all meant for drysailing, and that, along with the economy of small sails means that each of these boats is in the economic reach of the 20-somethings that the sport needs to gain longevity. They're here, they're hot, and regardless of which boat is the fastest, cheapest, or prettiest, the twenties should invigorate the sport of sailing - just in the nick of time. THE BOATS As explained above, these are all powered up raceboats. None is really built for true offshore conditions, although some are better equipped than others. Here is a short explanation of each boat - for a better analysis, do some research in the forums and with the links provided below. The Rocket 22 is the old man in the group, based on a design by Gary Mull in the early eighties. Mull's Pocket Rocket design was unbelievably far ahead of its times, and in 2005, a group of Canadians led by Anarchist Anthony Dutton relaunched the boat as the Rocket 22, with a redesign of the rig and deck by Don Martin. Pros: The Rocket is a wonderful boat, designed to sail with 2 or 3 crew. The controls are very well-placed, the cockpit is massive, and the fat body is extremely quick to plane. Sprit or pole, asym or symmetric add some versatility, especially for sailing school applications. No backstay and a hugely roached mainsail help find air up high while the others are stuck. The builders spent a small fortune moving to a resin-infusion system that creates something like a maximum of 10 pounds of variation between the heaviest and lightest R-22's in existence. Under most conditions, the Rocket is every bit as fast as a Melges 24, and that's with two less crew. There is a real cabin down below - spacious as hell, compared to most sportboats, and some owners have found that the Rocket makes a hell of a little camp-cruiser with a barbecue on the back. There was plenty of room for my 6'2" frame and Mer's smaller one down below, even with some acrobatics thrown in. Cons: The price tag is among the highest of this half-dozen, at last count. While you get more boat with the Rocket than the others, a (largely) single-purpose boat that costs $39,999 before sails and trailer is going to have a much harder time building OD fleets than a Viper, at around $22,000 before all the goodies. Then again, the Rocket is still significantly cheaper than a Melges 24, and is a better-built boat, with a larger, more technologically advanced Carbon rig. The Ultimate 20 ain't no spring chicken either, dating from 1994. The Antrim design has rabid adherents, and solid fleets in Northern California, the Southeast US, and the Great Lakes. Sarnia, Ontario builder Abbot Boats lost their manufacturing facility to a nasty fire a couple of years ago, and they've had a long haul to get manufacturing of the U-20 going again - even today, the word is that Bill Abbot is still working on getting some local approvals so that he can start building U-20s, which are in serious demand. Pros: A true reef in the main (required by class rules, I think) attests to the heavy-air ability of the U-20. When the Melges 24 is headed home, the Ultimate is often reefed down, crashing through the waves. The mast is overbuilt, and the hull is a brick shithouse. With carbon/lead keels and simple decks, the U-20 weighs only 1350 lbs, and still, somehow, manages to cram something of a cabin down below. This may not be important to many inshore racers, but the ability to do double duty from time to time helps some convince their wives to agree to a new boat purchase. Young kids, especially, like the portlight-clad cabin of the U-20. Class rules limit sail materials to Dacron. Used U-20s sell for almost as much as new ones, in part because they're so well-built, and in part because there have been no new U-20's in years. Cons: The boat looks and feels dated compared to the other designs, and it's underpowered in light air. While the other boats will continue to move in the lightest of airs, the U-20 will probably be the first to start rolling and slatting with the real lead mines. This certainly makes the Ultimate a better performer in big wind, but at the expense of true, all-around performance. You need an honest 15 knots to really get up on a plane, as the fractional asym is pretty small. The boat is somewhat pricey at around $30,000, but they truly do last forever. The Laser SB3 may be the spark that this hot segment needed to truly ignite. That's really strange, since by most accounts it is the slowest, heaviest, and ugliest of the bunch. Designed by Tony Castro, and based on the ancient Cork 1720 quasi-sportboat, the most remarkable thing about the SB3 has been the speed with which one-design fleets have broken out all over the UK. The UK class has embraced sponsorship, forging a lucrative alliance with Volkswagon, whose sponsorship deal included a free spinnaker to every one of the near-100 SB3 owners during last year's Cowes Week. Pros: If the UK model is any indication, Vanguard has a real plan to market the SB3 in the US - a place where marketing is king. Targeting prospective purchasers of larger numbers of boats, the builder will hope to quickly develop a few fleets, using those to attract more. Class rules prohibit hiking, and a stainless steel bar on deck enforces the rule, helping to attract older sailors to the class. Single-source sails help create a level playing field, and prevent arms races. The grooved bowsprit tunnel is a nice feature. Cons: Truthfully, there are many. This is a really heavy boat, with a fat, heavy twin-spreader aluminum rig. It's a dull, dated design. When production moved to Asia, serious build quality issues were found, including crunchy keel boxes and torn-up transoms. While Vanguard assures us that their QC has come a long way since then, the Laser name is not synonymous with high quality. At $33,000 for the boat, and $39,999 sailaway price, you don't get much for your money. No carbon keel, no carbon mast, no cabin, low-tech construction, questionable quality…BUT (and this is a big but) if Vanguard can somehow get 100 boats on the line at Key West in the two years it took them to do so in the UK, no one will ever remember this paragraph. The Open 5.70 is quirky, like most of the designs that make their way to our shores from the land of the cheese-eaters. Group Finot designed this innovative raceboat, and with twin rudders and a rotating mast, it really does share the looks of its namesakes - the Open 50 and 60. With over 200 boats sailing in France in less than three years, this thing has really hit its stride - and the fleet is growing in the US, especially on the West coast. Pros: Love it or hate it, the thing is distinctive as hell, and to my eye, screams sex appeal. $29,000 includes the sweet square-top main, jib and kite - a great price for a trick boat, even with no cabin. The boat is really light - less than half a ton - and the loads are low and easy for almost any crew to handle. In fact, one of the real advantages this boat and the Viper have is that two people can sail her just as well as three, and none need to be gorillas. Despite the relatively low sail area/displacement ratio, the efficiency of the rotating mast should help the Open move faster than her numbers in light air. Twin rudders mean that wipeouts are far less frequent, and a full-length traveler (like the Rocket) is a much better tool than a vang for mainsail shaping, especially when your main looks like Sponge Bob. The boat can sail with the keel in an intermediate position, good for launching when your lake evaporates like they're experiencing down in Georgia right now. There's a lot of carbon in the boat, and problems have been minimal in Europe despite French owners beating the hell out of them. Cons: So far, the Open 5.70's down in SoCal haven't been showing any light air speed. Twin rudders and a fat ass may not be enough to overcome the neat rig and efficient main. Short kite hoist means later planing than many of the boats here, but there are some videos on the web that show that the boat may be the best heavy weather ride of the bunch. Square mains, twin rudders, and rotating masts mean that the learning curve will be tougher to handle for some sailors. The Melges 20 doesn't get much mention here, because there ain't much to tell. Harry and the boys are holding most of the information back, possibly out of fear of someone ripping off their design, just like the Magic 25 did to the Melges 24 back in the day. Only now, 14 years after the 24 came out, is the M-24 getting going in Australia - most people think that if it wasn't for that bit of intellectual property theft, Oz might have a bigger M-24 fleet than France right now. All we know for now is that the boat is coming, that it's designed by Reichel/Pugh, and that it looks like hiking will be legs in. When asked whether the boat will be faster downwind than the 24, VP Andy Burdick said, "maybe." Melges has been fielding request for a few years now to produce a 20 footer, but the SB3's arrival looks to have lit a fire under their asses. Given the quality and support that Melges brings to their products, we expect the 20 to be fast, sexy, and reasonable in price, at least until one-design fleets take off and the boat can expect the kind of premium that the 24 has. Target price is somewhere around $35,000. I've left my new favorite for last. I saw my first Viper 640 in Annapolis, met new builder Paul Young from Rondar, and had a fabulous, if too short, sail with class president Justin Scott. We had the fortune of finding an SB3 out giving test sails, and 10 minutes of screwing around in an impromptu comparo made it obvious that the Viper is on another planet when it comes to almost every category that matters. With a massive 30+ boat fleet in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the 640 has proven it can attract and hold the interest of serious one-design racers, but the lack of real marketing dollars may make it tough to beat out the big-money muscle coming to this niche. We give real props to Justin and his merry men for doing some guerilla anarchist marketing, and we hope to see this great little boat succeed by using a different paradigm than the marketing hammers that Laser and Melges are known to employ. Pros: The sleekest looking boat in the bunch. A long nose and wide, radically-flared ass make the Viper look racy and ready for action. The chute retrieval system is the only one in the bunch, and is perfectly executed. Paul Young and the Class's introduction of a carbon rig and gnav have opened the boat up, and the controls are as simple as can be - nothing extraneous, no space wasted - and the cockpit is completely clean. The closed-cell foam core makes the boat essentially unsinkable. The kite is big, the jib stays up downwind, and the all-up weight of 737 pounds makes the Bennett designed sportboat the lightest of the group. We had the boat planing in around 11 knots of breeze - a truly powered up little ride. With the pronounced flare and long bow, the Viper is surprisingly dry, despite very little freeboard. The hull shape is so well-done and so low-drag that the boat feels like it's planing upwind. A price of around $28,000 including trailer is the least expensive of the group. Hiking is very comfortable with feet in the straps, and the loads are extremely low for a keelboat. I think you could tow this boat with a Honda motorcycle. Rondar is one of the most respected small boat builders in existence, and from what we could tell, the build quality was as good as any in this bunch, possibly better. Cons: Retrofitting is absolutely essential if you have an older boat - aluminum isn't going to be on the same leg as carbon with this boat. The tiny keel bulb really acts like more of a self-righting mechanism than anything else - the boat stays upright more because of its massive form stability rather than any weight down low. The boat we sailed had some old and shitty control lines, but other than that, neither Mer nor I could come up with anything bad to say about the boat. Young did a phenomenal job when rethinking the boat's systems (the Viper was designed in 1997) and the class members are to be commended for "doing it different". We
will have videos of our test sail, as well as interviews with Justin,
Andy Burdick, and one of the Vanguard guys over the next couple of days
in On-The-Water
Anarchy's Annapolis Boat Show thread, along with more boat and gear
reviews. Check in every now and again - the speed with which we get new
stuff posted depends on the crappy internet connection in our new place.
10/09/2007 |