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Hi Youngi
With the usual disclaimer that I don’t speak for the measurers, my understanding from discussions at black rock is that the plug was checked with sheets of ply cut to roughly the size of the flat panels. I won’t quote anyone directly, but the gist of it was that it wasn’t anything radical. I’m sure we will see when the first boats come out.
@Youngi-from-YMS wrote:
During my last, and I thought productive phone call with the National Measurer I was told the FS2 plug would be checked with a sheet of ply. A sheet is still smaller than the full panel but hast vastly different bend to a strip.
for many many years 420’s, 470’s Finns and FD’s were all made with strips of cedar. The fastest Contenders from Italy still are. I think every one would agree they are a vastly different shape to a Sabre.
We both agreed that Rhino and AutoCAD could not post measure that the shape re emulating ply……. as falsely reported on another stream.
And when a panel is flattened, the angles at the chines changes and the panel spreads out past centreline and the line of the side chine as well so needs cutting down on the 2 edges and/or side panel moved out (which is too hard on an internally glassed plug)….so the panel effectively become smaller in width than when first taken from the templates.
I guess my point, if I had one, is that although there is a lot of noise on this forum most of it is speculative. I can’t speak for the measurers but my understanding is that they are working through what may need to be done. Meanwhile there does not appear to be anyone exploiting or attempting to exploit any real or perceived gap in the rules. So while it’s always nice to have tighter rather than looser rules in a one-design class, there is no crisis here.
Perhaps all this energy could be directed at doing some sailing. This will benefit most people more than a few mm here or there on their hull shape.
I do agree it would be nice not to have anonymous posts. If people can not log in, they could at least put their name in their posts.
I hate to rain on anyone’s parade but there have always been all sorts of different shapes of Sabre. Take a look at the old ply boats – there is a huge difference (the early ones look like bananas compared to the later ones), and the manipulation of tolerances in ply is a fine art practised by a select few. Apparently the new FS plug is closer to the YMS, not further away, and not a radical departure.
No one has tried to measure in any sort of “rule cheater” that I am aware of. The sabre fleet is probably closer to a one-design than ever, and the racing reflects this. It seems to me that everyone needs to stop speculating on what might be, take a chill pill and let the measurers do their work.
Hi Craig
From Chris Dance’s rigging guide (which can be found here: https://www.sabre.org.au/australia_documents/Chris_Dance_Sabre_Rigging_Guide.pdf )“Keeley section: Most flexible and lightest
Binks SA: Medium bend and medium weight
John Dixon: Stiffest and heaviest”From here it all gets a bit murky. Binks apparently has a stock of Keeley sections as well as their own, so you can get a “Binks” or a “Binks Keeley”. And since we are working with aluminium, the anodising process affects the weight of the spar and its stiffness, so they probably vary from batch to batch. John Dixon’s web site (IECON boats) advertises the ability to tailor the spar to sailor weight, so it may be that he has a range of masts available or is a master of timing the etching process.
I think you’ll find that the Keeley section is the current popular choice, but is probably not a universal one. My personal view is that even the softest Sabre mast does not bend enough to get a full range of sail shape, and the Sabre boom and vang are too weak to bend it anyway, so there’s no need to have a stiff (i.e. heavy) one. Again that’s probably not a commonly shared view. I’m surprised there isn’t more analysis of masts and sails (as opposed to hulls) as they seem pretty important.
As for how to tell what yours is – I have no idea! Others may know. If you know who built or set up your boat then someone may know.
Daen (Sabre 1979)
As I understand it the stainless post came about due to a rule interpretation that has since changed – a bit of string as per the Chris Dance rigging guide is definitely the standard option these days and is a quick, cheap, easily adjusted and toe-friendly option. Hold it off the floor with a shock cord.
I reckon that Scott is right about wooden boats being fine for the first year or so, but progressively less competitive after that.
What makes a hull fast or slow anyway? The main things are the shape, weight (and its distribution) and stiffness.
It can’t be the shape, since the dominant YMS is a mould off a (more than ten year old) wooden boat anyway. Glass boats are pretty hard to build down to weight (my new YMS only has 400g of correctors, not several kilos as mentioned in some other posts), so it can’t be that either. Distribution might matter a little in waves, but Perth was flat anyway so it wouldn’t have made much difference. Stiffness may be the issue, when the wooden boats get old. Two experiments are probably worthwhile – one would be to build a ply hull and sheath the floor in carbon (illegal – but just as a trial). The other would be to have one of the top sailors try a newish timber boat in a regatta.
There is one other thing that might make a difference, and that is stiffening the front of the centreboard case in the timber boats. Even with a new one, you can flex the front of the case quite easily. This can’t be good!
I have a few other theories though. One is that all the fibreglass boats are fast, whereas there is huge variation in the wooden ones. Building a wooden boat to the right shape is a bit of a black art, and its finest proponents are either not building boats any more, or building very few. As fewer wooden boats are built, we are increasingly comparing new fibreglass boats to 10-year old wooden ones. And the really serious sailors will always have newish boats.
This is largely a perception problem. Jack Felsenthal sailed a timber boat to second in the Victorian states, beating all of this year’s nationals top 5 except Scott (ask Scott if Jack was slow!), plus some other very good sailors.
Looking at the fleet in perth, there were so many things that differentiated the sailors. People starting on the third row, tacking into dirty air, not hiking properly, sitting like a pudding in the boat on the run and so on. None of these are the boat’s fault. Murray Smith was probably the only person in the fleet who was genuinely held back by his equipment. I think his hull would have to be 15 years old, and struggled downwind although he was often up with the leaders at the top mark (in fact, a leg in front in one race!)
The short answer to your question is “yes”.
Wire halyards have a tendency to pull out of the track when the mast bends, with the resulting effect of losing halyard tension and jamming the track. Not to mention fraying and punching holes in your fingers.
Depending on the cleat that you choose, 5mm uncovered spectra may be a bit slippery and is overkill in terms of strength and cost. 5mm veclock is used on the standard YMS/Binks fitout and I have found it to be really good. I’m told 4mm can pull out of the track. Here is one source:http://binksmarine.com.au/store/ropes/prestetched-veclock/veclock-5mm-rpvl5
This has all become a bit silly.
The rule changes don’t do much other than remove provisions that add cost for no good reason, are redundant or have never been applied (like the reference to approved moulds). This should provide more clarity, not less. As far as I can tell the drafters of the rule changes overwhelmingly have the long-term interests of the class at heart and deserve to be given more respect, as Ashley points out.
Even with the tolerances in the existing rules, there is not that much difference between the boats. The Sabre is just too slow for a “super boat” to make a difference. Most of the top end of the fleet sail more or less the same boat, and there are plenty of new YMS boats at the back end of the fleet as well (all based on the same proven wooden boat), so equipment is clearly not the issue. As far as I can tell many new boat purchases reflect the ageing demographics of the sabre fleet as people treating themselves to a well-deserved new toy (often in retirement!) rather than trying to buy results. I can not see any of this changing just because a rule that has never been applied is removed from the book.
Of course boat builders have been consulted on the rule changes – they are the ones who have to work with them, and if anything their incentive is to maintain stability in the class so that they don’t have to waste money on expensive development and new tooling. All this talk of chequebook sailing and greedy builders is just silly – has anyone ever met a rich boatbuilder?
It’s cheaper if you fit it out yourself, but compared to many other classes it is about par for the course. A laser mast is about $650 or so, and is a simpler section with no stays or halyard. And even at $1k it is about a quarter of the price of the carbon masts used in some other singlehanders!
I assume this is a rhetorical question, since the lion’s share of boats built since sail number 1800 or so would probably be glass, and my new number is 1979 so that is quite a lot! Obviously people do want glass boats and this seems to have coincided with a boom in class numbers.
As someone who is new to the Sabre, the availability of good quality glass boats (which are pretty much identical) was one of the main reasons to join the class. Wooden boats are actually very expensive in terms of the time commitment (I’d rather spend my time sailing than gluing and varnishing), and unless very well maintained they do not last as long. Less than half the cost of my new boat is in the hull anyway, so for someone like me who doesn’t have time to spend winter building a wooden boat (even if I had the space to do it in!), there would be little difference in cost for a boat that does not last as long. I do agree that the wooden boats are beautiful, and that is always still an option.
And since every ply boat is a one-off, that is actually a lot more likely to lead to variations as people manipulate the tolerances. Taking a mould off a proven boat and making well-built versions available in glass is, in my view, a very good thing for the class and flattens the playing field.
