kato said..
Sorry Chris, did the club thing. Put a few hrs and lots of my $ into qualifications. Even became President but maybe it's time to let this horse die. Good luck to all who wish to follow this but having our sport split into 2 is DUMB

Who is talking about splitting the sport? When I first got involved in youth training, for example, the written plan specifically said that we should encourage kids to get into all areas of the sport.

The point is that slinging **** at people just because they don't do what you do is rubbish. There's plenty of good reasons why the people you mention did not sail "for fun". Partly it's because plenty of yachties, for example, race twice a week and at least one of those races is normally a twilight "race" which is basically a booze cruise in company a lot of the time. And they often race because it's an easy way to get everyone together at the same time, for a sail and a bunch of beers afterwards.

Calling such people or their way of sailing "pathetic" is just weird. Plenty of us don't care about the sailing you seem to love but I've never heard any us us insult or those who love it.

You don't grow a sport by throwing **** at anyone who doesn't share your own taste.

Chris 249 said..

kato said..
Sorry Chris, did the club thing. Put a few hrs and lots of my $ into qualifications. Even became President but maybe it's time to let this horse die. Good luck to all who wish to follow this but having our sport split into 2 is DUMB

Who is talking about splitting the sport? When I first got involved in youth training, for example, the written plan specifically said that we should encourage kids to get into all areas of the sport.

The point is that slinging **** at people just because they don't do what you do is rubbish. There's plenty of good reasons why the people you mention did not sail "for fun". Partly it's because plenty of yachties, for example, race twice a week and at least one of those races is normally a twilight "race" which is basically a booze cruise in company a lot of the time. And they often race because it's an easy way to get everyone together at the same time, for a sail and a bunch of beers afterwards.

Calling such people or their way of sailing "pathetic" is just weird. Plenty of us don't care about the sailing you seem to love but I've never heard any us us insult or those who love it.

You don't grow a sport by throwing **** at anyone who doesn't share your own taste.

WOW, grumpy bugger.
Currently YA controls triangle racing and the Olympics

WA controls slalom, wave, speed, freestyle or am I wrong

Last post

"YA" does not exist anymore it is Australian Sailing (AS) and the umbrella class association, Australian Windsurfing Association (AWA).

AWA is an affiliated class association of AS and for all of windsurfing which is itself a fiction as there are many classes in AWA, not sure if that is optimal but it is all windsurfing has at the top, not sure what AWA does actually in truth and fact other than generate sail numbers and procure insurance.

As Chris says the engine room is at sailor and class level in states and in clubs etc. People make things happen not these organisations.

Check out RRS with AS prescriptions too: cdn.revolutionise.com.au/site/hrya1mz0ijmfcshb.pdf
Rules for Slalom, Expression (including Wave and Freestyle) and Speed disciplines are not included in the above. These are available at the World Sailing website.

There are also special rules for slalom:www.sailing.org/documents/racingrules/29031.php

Some special rules for wingfoiling:www.sailing.org/documents/racingrules/experimental-rules.php

WS consolidated windsurfing RRS without AS prescriptions: www.sailing.org/documents/racingrules/29031.php

normster said..
How much is IQ foil complete ? did i see $15000 ?

Approximately yes. However there are enough sets in Aus now that equipment is starting to come up second hand.

Mitch Pearson said..

normster said..
How much is IQ foil complete ? did i see $15000 ?

Approximately yes. However there are enough sets in Aus now that equipment is starting to come up second hand.

What do you get for the money?

RichardG said..
An iQFoil is over five times the cost of a Windsurfer LT. That makes it hard to justify to many but not all. There will be an elite small bunch who buy them. Can't see it being as popular as the Laser or the Windsurfer LT.

A fully pimped out Laser is pretty close to $15000 so I guess people are willing to pay that amount. Still relatively cheap compared to the other olympic classes

RichardG said..
An iQFoil is over five times the cost of a Windsurfer LT. That makes it hard to justify to many but not all. There will be an elite small bunch who buy them. Can't see it being as popular as the Laser or the Windsurfer LT.

Exactly, its like a Camaro compared to a Corolla

AUS 814 said..

RichardG said..
An iQFoil is over five times the cost of a Windsurfer LT. That makes it hard to justify to many but not all. There will be an elite small bunch who buy them. Can't see it being as popular as the Laser or the Windsurfer LT.

A fully pimped out Laser is pretty close to $15000 so I guess people are willing to pay that amount. Still relatively cheap compared to the other olympic classes

It is pretty cheap compared to most other Olympic classes, but it's hard to compare it to a Laser. For one, only a small proportion of active Laser racers buy new gear. There's lots of boats that are 25 years old in club fleets and in recent years, only about 2000 new boats have been launched per annum in a class of over 200,000 boats built. The class relies for its value on the fact that those $2-3K boats Richard linked to above are perfectly good for the average club racer.

When you buy a new Laser, you're normally buying something you can race in a good local club fleet (or a selection of local club fleets) and in a big championship fleet, and then sell for about 85% of its original cost at the end of the year. That's a different proposition to buying into a typical Olympic class.

Launching a class with grass roots popularity like the Laser is incredibly hard these days. The RSX, even when new, was often only selling about 300-600 boards per year worldwide. FW claimed about 1000 p.a. in the mid 2000s. The 29er is very successful, but annual sales were down to about 100 before Covid.

Open-class foiling is big (which is great) but how it will work with the IQFoil and whether it will get enough numbers to be anything like comparable to a Laser, in terms of bang for the buck for the typical sailor, will be interesting to see. The prospect of racing against the Olympians often drives people away from a class, not towards it.

It'd be great if the IQFoil got good numbers. If they really emphasised youth, Masters and "Corinthians" (ie non-sponsored non-squad sailors with full time jobs) they may get critical mass, and that would be fun.

"Corinthian" is the big boat term - "Battlers" is better! Love it!

We only get negative when people tell OTHER people to do more volunteer work, or when they sling crap at other forms of sailing. :-)
When people post negative stuff about how other people should do more, you can understand if some of us react.

The Laser just went to new gear to keep replacement costs down, which is significant. Not many people really need a new Laser sail or top section to be competitive; your gear is only the problem if you're already top 10 or so nationally (IMHO, speaking as someone who was NSW champ when I was serious in the class). So the arrival of the new gear hasn't really changed the situation, which is that the Laser class has huge local fleets and therefore can't really be compared to the IQFoil.

From experience with other classes, the problem may not be that the Olympians won't be fast enough for other foilers, but that they will be too fast. So, out of interest, how quick is it compared to Open class gear?

jusavina said..iqfoilclass.org/worlds2021/entry-list/?utm_source=seabreeze.com.au
248 entries at the Olympic class world championship.
Fastest growing class?

Fastest growing Olympic class at the minute now quite likely to be so in terms of rate of growth since selection, one would of course have to compare to other new Olympic classes eg Kiteboard foiling etc.

Fastest growing class ? Not sure. Of course on the other hand, I would be surprised if the growth rate or indeed overall numbers of iQFoil exceed the Windsurfer Class but I guess one asserting it would need to prove the matter incontrovertibly.

Congratulations on iQFoil beating the RSX when compared to 2006. A similar or slightly better performance by iQFoil here to the first World championship for the RSX Class in 2006. A chap by the name of Mr Savina attended that I believe with a great performance in Gold Fleet. At that RSX regatta there there were 164 male competitors and 77 women (gold and silver fleets), in total 241 so not a bad effort by iQFoil to exceed that first RSX regatta by 7 sailors.

I hope iQFoil grows at the same rate in Australia. How many in Australia in total now ?

jusavina said..
iqfoilclass.org/worlds2021/entry-list/?utm_source=seabreeze.com.au

248 entries at the Olympic class world championship.

Fastest growing class?

Great to see. The website shows 202 to me, but that's still very good numbers. Whether it's the fastest-growing overall won't be known until they start releasing reliable production numbers and class activity.

jusavina said..

RichardG said..

jusavina said..iqfoilclass.org/worlds2021/entry-list/?utm_source=seabreeze.com.au
248 entries at the Olympic class world championship.
Fastest growing class?

Fastest growing Olympic class at the minute now quite likely to be so in terms of rate of growth since selection, one would of course have to compare to other new Olympic classes eg Kiteboard foiling etc.

Fastest growing class ? Not sure. Of course on the other hand, I would be surprised if the growth rate or indeed overall numbers of iQFoil exceed the Windsurfer Class but I guess one asserting it would need to prove the matter incontrovertibly.

Congratulations on iQFoil beating the RSX when compared to 2006. A similar or slightly better performance by iQFoil here to the first World championship for the RSX Class in 2006. A chap by the name of Mr Savina attended that I believe with a great performance in Gold Fleet. At that RSX regatta there there were 164 male competitors and 77 women (gold and silver fleets), in total 241 so not a bad effort by iQFoil to exceed that first RSX regatta by 7 sailors.

I hope iQFoil grows at the same rate in Australia. How many in Australia in total now ?

I wouldn't call it a great performance though

Gold Fleet is a great achievement of itself so well done to you, don't be so hard on yourself. I note the entries for the first 2021 iQFoil Worlds being down to 202 mean the iQFoil did not meet or exceed but was less than the first 2006 RSX Worlds (241). Still a good entry size, so well done to iQFoil.

RichardG said..

jusavina said..

RichardG said..

jusavina said..iqfoilclass.org/worlds2021/entry-list/?utm_source=seabreeze.com.au
248 entries at the Olympic class world championship.
Fastest growing class?

Fastest growing Olympic class at the minute now quite likely to be so in terms of rate of growth since selection, one would of course have to compare to other new Olympic classes eg Kiteboard foiling etc.

Fastest growing class ? Not sure. Of course on the other hand, I would be surprised if the growth rate or indeed overall numbers of iQFoil exceed the Windsurfer Class but I guess one asserting it would need to prove the matter incontrovertibly.

Congratulations on iQFoil beating the RSX when compared to 2006. A similar or slightly better performance by iQFoil here to the first World championship for the RSX Class in 2006. A chap by the name of Mr Savina attended that I believe with a great performance in Gold Fleet. At that RSX regatta there there were 164 male competitors and 77 women (gold and silver fleets), in total 241 so not a bad effort by iQFoil to exceed that first RSX regatta by 7 sailors.

I hope iQFoil grows at the same rate in Australia. How many in Australia in total now ?

I wouldn't call it a great performance though

Gold Fleet is a great achievement of itself so well done to you, don't be so hard on yourself. I note the entries for the first 2021 iQFoil Worlds being down to 202 mean the iQFoil did not meet or exceed but was less than the first 2006 RSX Worlds (241). Still a good entry size, so well done to iQFoil.

2006 worlds was not held during a pandemic.....

No one's defending the RSX, are they? Even now, Neil Pryde himself is claiming that it stopped Olympic sailing from "just being about white sails". Of course, the Windglider had the first coloured sails in the Games while the Lechner CI rig, IMCO and 49er had sails that look pretty much like RSX sails, way before the RSX was born. It could be just another example of the RSX being over-hyped by NP.

The first RSX Youth Worlds had 95 competitors so the IQFoil's youth turnout is definitely good. The board's definitely more in turn with windsurfing than the RSX and IMCO were.

The pandemic doesn't seem to have significantly reduced the entries for the comparable youth/junior worlds in boats; there are some regattas that are up in numbers, because competing events have been cancelled.

So what's going to happen to the Techno fleets now, and is there going to be a battle for youth between the IQFoil and the Techno foil? By the way, does anyone know the Aussie price for the Techno foil?