why is this fast?

another crew learning to tame the beast <img src="<>/wink.gif" alt="wink" title="wink" height="15" width="15" />

Again I ask you......

if they are so

bad

then why in God's name isn't there a photo of EVERY crew doing this ???

or are the photographers only snapping pics of the crews that haven't as yet adjusted to the N17 ???

N17..... just another step down the evolutionary road
<img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

Mark,

Have you sailed on one before?

JC says that it is his most favorite boat to sail. Its challenging and rewarding.

Again Mark how many regattas have you sailed the boat?

OMG ..... <img src="<>/shocked.gif" alt="shocked" title="shocked" height="15" width="15" />

& we should have banned these things years ago.....

<img src="<>/wink.gif" alt="wink" title="wink" height="15" width="15" />

IIRC, the shot of the H14 has the man himself on the tiller.

The boat was selected by the Olympic sailors who sailed them during the equipment trials. I'm sure you have a conspiracy theory all locked and loaded for that response, but I really don't see the world ending over this...

Mike

The way I understand it is that on the N17 when you make a mistake you jump loosing a few boat lengths as opposed to pitchpoling, I haven't seen many shots of a pitchpole. I think the whole concept is fantastic and I will probably have one down the track

There is a great quote in the French training de-brief here here about at what stage the crew has to just jump clear.

no, it isn't fast to luff the sails, but it is slow if you tip over.
scarecrow, thanks for the link. That channel has all kinds of informative videos. The one that followed the nacra vid told all about the 18 skiff worlds and lead into the aussie challenge for the AC.
As for jumping off the boat; is that even true? i have always told my crew to hold on and don't get separated from the boat.

b.476729645680245&type=2&theater

here is a couple pitchpoles

How about the courage of those sailors, all the other classes didn't race and they were trying to pull the spins out. It gets my heart rate up watching the vid and makes me want one even more. I have had to jump as far as I can to leeward a couple of times in big wind because the wind on the tramp pushes the boat so fast that I have smacked my head a couple of times coming up. I don't think I would bother jumping if it was going over backwards because I think that would be pretty slow anyway

I don't understand why they want to go 'half assed' when it comes to foiling. If they want to do it, why not just pick a full on foiling cat and do it right? Is the Nacra 17 that much cheaper than a Flying Phantom?

As if money were the deciding factor in any Olympic racing class...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5doBIv3TVbA

Hi Mark,
I strongly advice you to chat with the teams who sail the 17 (rather than basing your opinion on press photos) when it comes to the speed, performance and excitement of the 17.....it is a real test of sailing skills and fitness.......better still get someone to take you out on one.....I guarantee you will understand then!

Hi Timbo,
Worth you while checking out the selection of 2016 equipment and what the choices were and how the evaluation process went (one of the criteria was cost)......the FP was supposed to be at the trials but wasn't ready....given we are now 18 months into the olympic 4 year cycle and still there is no 3 sail production catamaran suitable for a mixed team being delivered (the F20 C FCS would most definitely not be suitable for a mixed team of between 120kg and 140 kg!) I am not sure what your suggestion would be instead of the 17?

well, in a nutshell, if all racing in the entire world was COMPLETELY about speed nobody would be racing sailboats anyway.

It's also the same reason I get enjoyment out of racing a 6 knot **** box J22 - it's definitely NOT about speed. It's about challenge. It's about using your skill and body to beat the other guy who also happens to be racing the same craft with the same identical limitations.

No, popping wheelies isn't the fastest way to get around the race course...clearly. But given the fact that it's so wildly photographed, that alone means that people see it as an exciting aspect of the N17 - photographers capture it and people like to see it...all of that is good for the sport, good for multihulls, and good for the N17.

Jake, Why do you think it is good for the sport?

When you see gran prix skiers... going like hell.... you say... wow... that is some Hill and those guys are great skiers for doing that.... It is never about the skis. The universe of skiers grows as skiers take on the challenge of increasingly bigger hills.. It's about the hill and the skill to dominate it.

When you see other boats..... they are sailing in a seaman link way... Boats don't routinely pop wheelies! I think the public says... wow... look at that crazy boat.... those guys are intense. Sailing is now an extreme sport... That may be good for the 20 secs of TV time... but I don't see extreme sports growing in popularity... they remain small niches for the adrenalin junkie. Sailors look at those pics and say... That boat is just not right.. It should not do that time and time again... just for the benefit of sailing photographers and photo editors.. They ask... How is that fast... I thought the game was racing the other guys as fast as you can...

(I say... Fix the damn boat)

Nacraman, The old pros insisted that the Marstrom Tornado was the best two man cat package on the water... Easy to sail... a true challenge to sail well, a boat suitable for the olympics.. The Marstrom 20 raised the bar by cutting weight and updating the design for a Windward Leeward racer.... The N17 is the culmination of the fiasco that demanded mixed teams and not open.. and locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever. This selection process is the result of compromise... The N17 looks like its harder to sail and obviously a true challenge to sail flat and well. Fix the boat so that its easy to sail, aka a good boat, and it will remain an Olympic boat... (Hell.... the venerable laser is the Olympic boat and so the point is... the equipment is not determinative)

Any of the other boats in the trials would have worked... Its about the sailing.. not the boat. Those boats are mature and proven designs. The focus would be on the racing. That is what the olympics calls for.

The N17 was incomplete and not tested... The rig was a complete failure and replaced with something solid... the foil package is half done... the boat needs to evolve to a stable package.. T foil rudders and move the board positions) In short it needs to be fixed. The only time anyone should comment on the boat is when they are looking for the class name for the results sheet..

Today...the story remains... look at that crazy boat popping a wheelie. (again) Far too many regatta stories have a N17 wheelie photo!

Mark,the Tornado is gone, over, irrelevant. I would much rather have seen the Tornado come back because it's something I could have sailed with my current crew. But constantly looking back at that boat and time isn't going to help progressing what we have now which is a great multihull olympic class.
If you insist that open is the way to go you are irrelevant as well. Yes there have been some teams that have had a hard time with the mixed concept and others that were dissapointed. But how can you argue with the numbers and activity going on in this class? Personally I think it's great. Look at the caliber of sailors it's attracted from other classes that had no other option until now.
How can you use the word

fiasco

? And how can you say in good authority that it has

locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever.

?
The photo in question is of Frank Cammas... I'm pretty sure he knows what's fast.
Mark, you have no idea when this was, some of the 17 sailors do this for fun between and after races. That's why (like in this photo) there are rarely other boats around. I'm guessing there is only a marginal condition where boards all the way down double trapped downwind is an advantage.
Yes we've seen it happen in videos during racing. Maybe those teams need to get their boards up sooner which is not a fault of the boat.

Fixed it for you.

No doubting the quality of the Tornado (I learnt to sail cats on a Tornado and it is the only boat that I own and I love it!)......but as you said it is a

two man cat package

and the olympic requirement for 2016 is a mixed team boat suited to that 120kg to 140kg weight range (and that rules the big T out).......the Marstrom 20 is/was a great boat, but really only one is now sailed in anger in Europe, and that is heavily modified with 12' beam, 3 sail rig, F20 C mast, curved raking boards (about to be converted to full foiling), t foil rudders and renamed as the Vampire (owned by a good friend of mine). The only Marstrom 20 original parts are the hulls and they have been heavily modified with replacement cases, etc....the rest of the European fleet have moved to F20 C's because it thrashes the standard Marstrom 20 (but thats a whole other story!)......now whether the mixed team criteria is a fiasco is something we could argue about till we are old and grey, it is how it is.......yes the 17 is a difficult boat to master without doubt and so it should be.....we are talking about top athletes at the top of their game.....you mentioned skying as an analogy to olympic sailing.....lets take a different analogy of the top end of motor car racing...F1 cars and Indy cars are a difficult test of driving skills that could be replaced with standard road cars that are

easy

to drive so drivers could concentrate their skills on tactics, etc......is that what we want?......if thats the case when applied to the sailing world we need to get rid of the 49er and the 49erfX as well as the 17!.....the selection of boats that are used as olympic equipment cover a broad range of sailing technique and skills....if you don't have the right skill to sail a 17 sail a laser, simple....

I still actively encourage you to speak to the US teams who sail the 17 at Olympic level about how they feel about the boat and strongly encourage you to go have a sail on a 17.....

Hi Mark,
When the trial happened it really was between the Viper and the 17.......none of the other boats really came close to those two in terms of selection to fit the ISAF/IOC criteria......interestingly I had a long chat with one of the GB squad sailors who also happens to be part of the family who sell the Viper in the UK and he has a clear opinion that the the 17 was the right choice! (and he had previously been in the GB squad on the T prior to it being dropped from the Olympics!)....as for the 17 not being tested and its initial rig issues, we could say the same about the 49er......would you want the 49er dropped from the Olympics now......there is possibly an argument for t foil rudders although there is also a strong argument not to tame the 17 with the addition of the t foil rudders!.....why do the boards need to be moved???.......

Press photos of 17 wheelies isn't a strong argument to change things otherwise pitch poling 49ers and all those broaching monos should have been removed from international competition a long time ago.......

I agree that the selection came down to a Viper and the N17. They had different strengths and weakness per the ISAF specs. The choice was clearly for a bigger boat and ISAF accepted the risk that the boat was not quite done. The technical committee failed to get the job completed.

So you note.... Taming the N17 with T foils and suggest that choosing not to do so is reasonable... I think that it is as unreasonable as telling the A class sailors to just man up and not put T foils on their C foiled DNA's... just because the pitch pole factor is more challenging. YMMV.

Why move the boards.... because all of the A class designers do what Melvin did and put the boards where the math tells them to... then a year later... they move them forward. So... its just a hunch. YMMV.

So, the 49ner team did extensive changes in the first two years to get the boat basically right.... Nacra was forced to redesign the rig and they did that after the breakages.... For some reason... they did not refine the boat in the same manner and to the same degree as the 49ner... That is my point... it is half baked... I don't know... maybe the politics of it all made them stop refining the boat... ISAF gave them a year to get it working and ... by definition... it was done after a year. The ISAF technical committee had a lot riding on the wisdom of picking this design and their judgement that this was the right design and they believed Melvin's mumbo jumbo... ... ERGO... the world nods their head....the boat is right after a year... I am the kid yelling.. hey mom... the emperor has no clothes... To me it looks pretty silly and lame for the boat to be jumping out of the water after the best in the world have sailed it for two years.

In choosing a SMOD boat that was unproven... the onus was on the ISAF and NACRA to get it right...

Time will tell... if the boat stays the same for the next quad... You guys were right... and I will acknowledge the error in my judgment... If they change it... The question should be... what the hell took so long and who is accountable.

I think Nacra will insist on changes because you probably have a hard time selling this kind of boat to the public high performance market... For reference, look at the F18HT class... Indeed it is a challenging boat to keep the pointy end up in a breeze... You could also say... the boat has bad to terrible manners. YMMV... nevertheless... challenging to sail does not make it appropriate for the Olympics.

Accountable?

I'm sorry, did I miss something here? Did someone die while sailing the N17? No? I didn't think so.

Accountable for what? Delivering a boat that all the sailors love, delivering a boat that is going to have great watchability on the olympic stage?

What axe are you grinding here Mark? Your usual nonsensical pontifications have some basis in legitimate criticism but this one seems to be

I don't like these pictures!

Tornado > N17

*yawn*

I don't think they could change much this far into the cycle, probably when the next Olympics come up there will be mods on the boat. As for the Tornado going and mixed teams coming in it's worth reminding everyone that was the blindside by the US 2 votes and NZ 1 vote, Olympic reps they said they were voting for cats and voted it out. Now I'm just glad we're back in the Olympics

Why should I care whether this is fast or not?

<img src="<>/laugh.gif" alt="laugh" title="laugh" height="15" width="15" />

Sail the boat before giving unsupported statements that the boat is half baked--dodn't repeat your arguments- sail it-sail it first- [or talk to someone who did [btw I did and it is the most exciting boat I've sailed... ever...]

Change the f'n record already. News Flash!!! You're never going to get out from behind the keyboard anyway and start training for the Olympics, so you shouldn't worry yourself with the new boat. Now go get yourself a new crossword puzzle book and get back to some real excitement.