Nacra 17 selected for 2020 Olympics in Japan

Great news- keep the cats olympic!

Does anyone rave about how great a sailing boat the N17 is?

Does it have a life outside of the Olympics?

Yes, but the design could benefit from rudder stabilizers and moving the daggers a bit forward.

Yes, the F 18 is a global success, but the N 17 is creeping into the hands of new cat owners and Olympic sailors from the past in our area.

Kirk will let you have one for about 30k with trailer, cover, and cat trax.

I think you'll see the class (and Nacra) move to add winglets after the 2016 Olympics. Sailors will vote to add them as it will improve the boat, Nacra will agree to do it so they can sell new rudders and/or conversion kits to all the exiting owners.

Expensive rudders, expensive daggers, expensive masts.

Maybe I'm getting old, but seems we're getting a lot closer to the asymptote on the law of diminishing returns curve.

Of course, if I win the lottery, I'm all in for some of that cool sh!t. <img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

Got a link to that

story

?
Winglets should help control this.
(the photo shows a 17 with the bows lifted up high)

Check here.

Yup... that's the picture that I think of when I check in on the N17... It is not a well behaved boat in the present configuration and the presumptive plan is to fix it after Rio.

Where is ISAF in this mess.... the 49ner was new equipment and they had several mods to get the boat right.... It simply takes a few years.. Why have ISAF not forced Nacra to get the boat right for Rio ... (the cynic in me wants to know... who gets paid off in this fubar).

IMO, The ISAF selection process failed... They should have never selected a boat based on the hype. Hell they trialed a boat with out the proper mast even designed!... and the assurances of pete melvin about just how great the new stuff would be... nothing more then crap! There is nothing revolutionary about this design (that works well)... In fact, they just added to the premium price... EG. curved boards.... carbon sticks and after Rio winged rudders.

As far as I can see... the only group that made out on this fubar is NACRA. The Olympic sailors deserve a boat at least as good as the Tornado or an F18. ISAF should give them that boat NOW.

Meanwhile... the BS that we need NEW... Ground breaking Cutting EDGE Olympic equipment... was a load of crap..
Notice all of the new equipment that ISAF wants to use for 2020 ... eg ... the 470... Laser... 49ner and 49ner XX and RSX Board. These are tried and true gear and have not changed in a generation.

Sadly, we did this to ourselves...

OH... and the grand plan... to move from Mixed to Men's and Woman's Multihulls... Up in smoke... Turns out... (and as I argued with JW at the time) was just nothing more then the propaganda used by OUR representatives to sell the god for saken Mixed disipline.. So... today... we just learned that If they get more events... they will be in KITES... not another multihull.... (Hard to see how you could get MIXED kites)
Nope... once the multihull was in... as Mixed... the Finn class could breathe a sigh of relief... And they just got rubber stamped for 2020.

Remember.... at the time of this decision.. LE had already won the cup on Dogzilla and there was NO WAY IN HELL that the olympics would not fix the Tornado disaster and put a Multihull back in....

We played the hand poorly.

We were screwed by our own volition and short sighted leadership. Sigh....

H-16

I agree that the Nacra seems to be a very expensive, under developed boat. I don't think I would want it if I were in the Olympic running. However, if I remember correctly, most of the testers were Olympic athletes or hopefuls. They picked that boat as a group over the other choices that were brought to the selection process.

For some reason, I don't think the boat sails like that picture when under control by an experienced N17 crew. Could that be the case? If that assumption is true, then it puts the onus on the sailors to manage the boat appropriately in order to win the race. Is that not what we want? How is that a FUBAR? The best sailors with the most experience on the boat are going to win, either way - right?

I've talked at length with many people who have sailed the 17, and they all really enjoy the boat. Sure the boat is powered up and sometimes crashes in big breeze- but these are Olympic level athletes and the boat should be a challenge. I really enjoyed Luke Ramsay's blog post today where he talked about the learning curve of the boat and just how much fun he is having:

http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Nikola-Girke-and-Luke-Ramsay-train-in-Miami/116898

Why so negative all the time?

I think Jake put it best.

Ah.... the best description of what you want in an Olympic Boat that I know is from Bill Roberts. He used a Formula 1 race car analogy.... noting... the pro drivers can manage this car while amateurs go into the wall. Goran Marstrom (Tornado and M20)builder wanted a boat that was sensitive to the actions of the crew (Bill Roberts criteria) and allowed the team to race the boat tactically. Together these attributes allow an Olympic level race to sort out very very fine degrees of skill and eliminate luck as much as possible.

So..the combination allows the BEST sailor to medal. Just having a boat that is hard to sail or badly behaved is a low bar. Hell... if this is our standard... the Hobie 16, is hard to sail by newbies... yet the top sailors have no problems.

So... what you don't hear are glowing testimonials about what a great sailing boat the N17 is.... Compare that to the A cat sailors talking about how wonderful the Flyer and like ilk A cats are.... and now they are over the moon about the DNA generation boats with winglets and the right foils. (IME, both are true and on par with the Tornado as machines) The new boats are faster, easier to sail and make the game fast and tactical. THAT should be the Olympic Boat as well.

Maybe the reason you

don't hear

anything is because the owners of N-17s are exclusively Olympic hopefuls (that's why they bought them) who are actually SAILING and training in the gym and elsewhere and it's highly likely they feel their time can be better spent improving their sailing than getting on a forum and trying to convince someone who rarely sails a cat anymore, that any shift from perfection is not the end of the world and a Doomsday for catsailing. Maybe you should try getting up with some of the owners and actually ASK them what they think. Personally the only thing that interests me about Olympic sailing is the people involved, as long as it's on a challenging boat. I think too much is made of it's importance to the sport.

Two posts above yours is a link to an actual Olympic hopeful talking about getting up to speed on the boat. I'll take their words over yours.

That article makes my point perfectly,it states nothing about boat problems except maybe the mast, which has been remedied and says they are learning the boats by TRAINING.Seems the same as what I said vs. Mark's trying to find fatal, Olympic ending, catamaran doomed issues with everything. According to your (Tshan) post #267176 we are on the same page. Maybe I wasn't clear.
You also need to remember for these sailors the N-17 is a tool, it's what they HAVE to be on to compete in the Olympics. As opposed to a F-18, A cat or H-16 sailor where their boat is their baby and they want to brag on their baby.

Those 17s look like pretty high performance cats to me.
It will be interesting to see how many male drivers will medal.

From my own experience i would speculate that the N17 would be more fun to go off the wind in a breeze with some winglets or a T rudder. Controlled skimming. The skill it takes to balance that boat w/o winglets may just add to the competon, however.
Forecast for wind in Rio for the olympics?

12

We are. I was replying to Mark, but didn't do so until after your post.

Mark,
From all the owners that I have talked to the boat is great.

The only issue I see is the sometimes lack of stability.. getting too much lift off the boards.. The problem is that the boat was designed just before a MAJOR shift in foil technology before that last AC. Keep in mind that curved foils have been used for years on other boats like the M20 and nobody seemed to complain then. The olympic folks are just pushing it harder trying to get max lift.

I have spent 3 years on a Nacra F20c and this year I put some winglets on the rudders. Wow what a difference. I can push it harder, get more lift from the boards and have more control. I can tell you.. once you sail a boat with lifting boards you won't go back..

Confirming for me why I don't waste time on this website anymore. Mark - kiss you. You still don't know what the hell you're talking about. But I love how you revise history to make it look like you're prophetic. I mean, pathetic.

Meanwhile, happy sailors sail on.

Dave, I agree about the boards... I sailed Chris Brown's DNA and wow... what a ride.... It was on par with my Tornado.

YMMV but the

the sometimes lack of stability.. getting too much lift off the boards..

is not what you want for the Olympics. You have 10 hour long races... I want the random chance factor to go to zero as best as possible. One

sometime lack of stability

is not the standard for an Olympic boat. One unlucky wave should not determine a medal.
Sure, everyone deals with the same boat... but the boat should at least match the Tornado with respect to the luck factor.

I agree, there was a major shift in technology and the bottom line is that boat is not right. (eg...

sometime lack of stability

) the question is... why has the boat not been modified to get it right....ISAF did this with the Bethwaite 49ner. Why not the Nacra 17.

Surprised to see the 17 even made out of the factory behaving like this .. nice to look at though..TG

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhRbUTPi-dU

I think that this is outstanding news. Gives a level of stability for the sailors, MNAs and NACRA (who, by the sounds of it in multiple threads on this forum, as well as word on the street regarding parts availability in general, really need to get their act together in terms of support).

The boat was selected by the sailors at the test event. I don't think there was a serious MNA on the planet willing to vote against the direct result of the sailors. If nothing else, they could blame the sailors and wash their hands of it politically (this of course, is all speculation).

If there are design flaws that can be addressed with rule changes, the sailors will drive that. Even if nothing changes, it should be the most exciting boat at the Olympics.

And, the kite thing is a no-brainer, assuming the fad hasn't expired by the time of the next quad. Finns have an awful lot of political support, so it will take a major change to ever see them go away. Of course, I'm on record for saying the same about the Stars (actually, I still can't believe that actually happened, or that Brazil didn't pull it back in with the extra host medal)...

Mike

+1

I like the unfiltered JW.