Why are there no racing rules based on fixed cost with free length, sailarea, choice of materials etc???

It is easy to standardize cost of different materials, and specify a minimum limit of safety (the designer has to take his kids for a one week cruise around Jan Mayen in November to prove seaworthiness, general ease of use, efficient design and structural toughness ( a “little” exaggerated but i hope you understand my general idea of the test of safety. A test based on real use in tough conditions, combined with calculations and the works)).

This would spur innovation of efficient design, high speed etc, instead of costly excesses in exotic materials and totally unsuitable designs for “normal” sailors. Who would like to cruise with his or her family in an AC72?

I guess we would see a lot of Proas in this race class.

Cheers,
Johannes

My descent into the dark side started with a fixed (low) cost sail boat race.

http://www.pdracer.com/boat-shorty/50-dollar-sailboat-race/acdc/

http://duckworksmagazine.com/04/s/designs/johnson/acdc/index.cfm

Cheers,
Skip

Over the years there have been many attempts to formulate rules based on cost. It sounds like a simple thing but in reality it is very difficult to police spending. No attempts to date have been successful.

Mal.

We did it for a few years, as a means of having a bit of fun after hours with the boatyard crew.  We operated it just like claiming races in the horse racing business: everybody’s boat was always up for sale for anyone else to buy for the price limit, in our case $300.

You were welcome to spend all you wanted to win, but if you did (or at least did it well) then your extra expenditure was likely to be taken away from you at the end of each race.  It was quite interesting to see races between such an eclectic bunch of craft!

I agree with you Johannes that something liek that would be the best thing for the development of affordable boats with good performance and seaworthiness. Unfortunately I also think that policing spending is going to be really difficult. Maybe I know some guys who produce wind turbines, who always have plenty of carbon fiber scraps lying around that I can have for free. A guy I know built an all carbon fiber kayak for the same price as I built a cheap plywood canoe of the same size, since he knew a person precisely like that, and got what would otherwise have been 800€ in carbon fiber cloth, as irregularily shaped leftover scraps, at no cost whatsoever.—Even if you ‘standardize’ the costs of materials, it’s going to be quite difficult to police.

You could do what MTP has suggested, though I wouldn’t be too happy about something like that even if I stuck to the cost estimate, since I wouldn’t get paid for my labor in that. For some beach-proas that could be fine, but if it’s a light racer-cruiser then I wouldn’t want to give that thing up over my dead body. :D

Another approach may be to do what was done in the class rules of the Contender dinghy; just ban the use of ‘exotic’ / expensive materials altogether.

Alternatively you could also provide a bill of materials from which to design / build your boat. You get a ‘bag of stuff’, and you have to build your boat from that, and as part of the process, you have to document which materials you used how (e.g. full-sized parts layouts for plywood sheets), and produce some lines drawings too. If you wanted to ensure that different types of boatbuilding are represented (for instance that you can strip plank your boat too and aren’t forced to use plywood), you could make several different ‘bags’ of materials that you can choose from at the start, which are equivalent on a cost basis. Personally I like this approach best; if the documentation of how you used your materials was published after each racing season together a set of drawings nad photos to document the stuff, then that would pretty much be a set of plans, and you’d really be rocking here. Loads of great open-source plans for fixed-cost boats, and if the rules force everyone to share their design at the end of the season, then the rate of progress could be pretty astounding.—For the sail area you could just fix make a limit, and ban the really expensive sail fabrics; that way people can still use sails from elsewhere and aren’t forced to make their own. Including sailcloth in the bag of materials would be a bad idea I think, since making good sails is a really difficult skill to master. On the other hand, if the sail plans are shared at the end of each season as well then maybe that wouldn’t be so bad…

In terms of LOA and Beam I think I wouldn’t even have a box rule in that case, just limit the sail area and the materials available. If the people want to build a dinghy, or a torpedo with 3x the length, then that should be left up to them.

Making a box rule and banning exotic materials would be quite a bit easier to do though than all this though…

Cheers,
Marco

Johannes - 11 June 2014 06:21 AM

Why are there no racing rules based on fixed cost with free length, sailarea, choice of materials etc???

This is a well-worn subject in other forums, Johannes. It is one of my favorites. The “deal killer” objection, as has been stated here, is just how one defines “cost” of an item. Wholesale? Retail? Sum of its parts? Sub-contracted to the best in the world?

The suggestion of providing a pile of materials and the competitor is told “Do your Best!” gains many aficionados, but generally trends towards one-time use cardboard boats, or other short-lived and flimsy contraptions. Still they are great fun and, often, are free to the entrants.

Best, IMO is claiming races. Few really understand these, but the model used in horse racing is very close to what’s wanted: One acquires a horse, one trains that horse, and one races that horse. Depending solely and precisely on how well the horse does determines that horse’s true value. Should the owner wish to sell, he can hold an auction or he can try to sell directly to a friend or stranger—or he can enter the horse in a claiming race.

This is essentially a method of classifying the value of the horse according to its ability. If I have a fast horse and I want to win money, I will race him against similar horses, and take home any purses I may win. In order to enter said race, however, I must declare the horse for sale, at a fixed cost, before the race begins—the same as all the other horses in that particular race. So, no “ringers,” where I might enter a fast (valuable) horse in a “cheap” race and grab all the prize money. Similarly, if I enter a slower (less valuable) horse, I can be assured nobody will buy him from under me, but I have little chance of winning the race, either.

In boats, generally the “claiming” price is set before anything gets built. If it’s to be a $5000 claiming class, every boat entered is “for sale” for $5000. It behooves anyone who enters to be satisfied with that number, if and when. If you value your boat at $10k, best not to enter a $5k race! It’s easy if you buy the boat—you are free to enter it in any claiming race higher than you paid for it and you go home happy, win or lose. Want to get rid of it? race it in a lower “class” of race where somebody will snatch it up. The problems come when you build the boat. You may be a boat design genius and a master craftsman, and by golly, your labor is valuable. Worse, you don’t want to suffer the humility of first being forced to sell what you perceive as a great boat, only to be beaten by that very boat in some future race, by the guy who snagged it out from under you in the first place!

This is because some don’t understand the definition of “value;” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(marketing)

If a thing is “beyond price,” then don’t offer it for sale—ie: don’t enter any claiming races with it. OTOH, if you have a great idea for a class world-beater, and can build them both fast and economically, you can go make a living out of claiming races. For the great majority of us, sailing falls somewhere between these two extrees, and is done for fun. Claimers can be great fun, if we only let them be. they tend to “build” healthy boats and they allow those who like something new every year to do so without paupering themselves—and for non-builders to go sailing in a variety of boats, all for not a huge amount of money.

Anybody else have input on claiming races for small homebuilt boats?

Dave