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Home  News Wouter Hijink steps down as Chair
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Wouter Hijink steps down as Chair |
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With the formation of the F16 Governing Council, Wouter Hijink has stepped down as Chair of the F16 Class. One of the founding members of the class, Wouter has been instrumental in the development and promotion of the F16 concept over the last five years. In handing over control of the class to the new Governing Council, Wouter has provided a departing brief. Read below for more details.
A departing briefIn simple words, my tenure as the F16 class chairman will come to an end this Monday 1st May 2006. For me, this is a special moment. I feel both delighted and a little uneasy. After founding this class 5 years ago together with Phill Brander and Kirt Simmons, I’ve experienced every moment in its history to the max. Both the good times as the bad. In a way its well being has become part of my emotional state and I fear that I’ll experience some withdraw sympthoms in my immediate future. I must really take care to not have this express itself by continued meddling with the affairs of the new class officials. So I would like to present you all with this departing brief in which I shall speak my thoughts one last time before I fully clear the way for my successors. Additionally, this brief will mark be the final act in a process that saw the founding members Kirt, Phill and myself stepping aside to make way for the new F16 governing council. This governing council will see Hans Klok (NED) as the chairman, Hans Geissler (USA) as the secretary and John Alani (UK) as the treasurer. A well balanced council in both nationality and the brand of F16 boats they personally sail. They are also very experienced in catamaran design and the catamaran scene as whole. I think that I can speak for all the founding members when I say that being replaced by this new governing council is nothing short of a great honour.
In this sense I should indeed make my exist as chairman both timely and complete. Although I suspect that my status as a founding member of the F16 class and as its caretaker in the very sensitive first years of existance will never allow me to fully become just one the F16 sailors. I will certainly try.
But, first these final comments.
I believe the F16 class rules do a very good job of allowing maximum freedom in boat design and modifying boats to personal preference without upsetting the equality of performance over boats of different makes; thus ensuring fair class racing. The rules are also very specific in clearifying that the original intent of the founders was that improvement of the basic F16 design is allowed. Both by refinement and development. In this sense the F16 class will never be stationary in its setup and indeed its performance will increase (gradually) over time. No sailor or class official should ever expect the F16 class to be anything other then this.
I chose to underline this aspect of the F16 class as I expect many voices in the future to start calling louder and louder for more limits and more garantees of equality. I personally fear this development above all others. It is my opinion that this tendency should be combatted at all times as it can cause serious damage the Formula 16 class and even threaten its continued existance.
However, the founders also did not intent the F16 class to become a fully blown arms race for a select few sailors. It was certainly felt that development was both good and necessesary for an enduring beach catamaran class, but it is was equally well understood that unbridled development was not in the interest of the class either. The key to maintaining this balance was found in allowing “gradual development”. This has been intepreted as being development that is slowed down to such a pace that commonly encountered replacement of parts or boats due to wear coincides with the introduction of incremental improvements.
This way the F16 class should neither be more expensive then any strict one-design class nor risk committing suicide by allowing itself to become outdated in comparison to other classes or newly launched designs.
The process of gradual improvement should not give rise to fearing the resulting inequality between new boats and aging boats. Sure enough, when given enough time a measureable performance inequality between these two will develop. However the magnitude of these will be such that they are made insignificant by both differences in skill level and general loss of performance due to wear. The competitive life expectancy of individual boats and parts is typically shorter then those of the underlying designs. Any serious racing crew in either a strict one-design class or an open class will replace their suit of sails every two years and replace their whole boat every four to five years. Crews who are one level down in regatta achievements are typically much more helped by first improving their sailing skills then by purchasing new sails or new boats. This has been shown time and time again. So all development is perfectly acceptable from a fairness in racing viewpoint when it is gradual enough to be either relatively insignificant from replacement to replacement or when it is much smaller then improvements in skill.
This also brings me to the next three keypoints I want to highlight.
First, we must combat the myth that boat design and the newness of parts lead to anything but insignificant gains unless your sailing skill is such that you are continiously finishing in the top 20 % on any given boat anyway. From the moment the F16 class was founded it had a policy of focussing the crews on what is truly effective and what is just myth. It strived to teach crews that quite a few personal barriers in performance are just mental in nature. Exposing them to what skilled crews could achieve on the same design never failed to open their eyes and propelled them instantly into high performance themselfs. The F16 class must in my view continue to educate all who are linked to the F16 class in this manner.
Secondly, the F16 class was born out of science, it was guided by science in its first years and it achieved succes by always depending on science. It should continue to have the class fully rooted in science and reject any other course in handling the F16 class affairs. When need be it should educate its officials and members into the key points of scientific discourse. There are a lot of people with a miriad of gut feelings out there who feel that their fear should be translated into more rules. Some may even come to demand such changes. Sadly, more often then not the causes of their fears are scientifically disprovable or can be shown by scientific means to be too insignificant to warrant any chance to the class rules. In some cases they propose changes that are downright counterproductive and rather enhance inequality then reduce it. At first glance their proposals may appear sound but checking them against scientifically devellopped models may well show them to be unsound.
An example: a future mainsail design may be better in shape then a current model. Even the possibility that one mainsail may be marginably better then another will spook a portion of the class. This is a law of nature. A proposal is made to control this development and further enforce equality between boats. This proposal states that every 5 years the class will approve a new mainsail design that is to be used for the next 5 years. As such it still allows development as stated in the founders intent while more tightly controlling equality; a sound proposal or so it is thought. However small yearly improvements are more often then not too small to really matter between builds of neighbouring years, however, the summing up small yearly incrediments over several years can amount to a single significant improvement. So instead of small neglectable incrediments yearly we have transformed it into a 5-yearly major improvement. This will instantly devide the fleet in “haves” and “have-nots” at each transition from one 5-year period to another, which would be unacceptable for a score of reasons. It is far better to just open up the sail design completely and thus diffuse the introduction of improvements over the same 5 years. To have it infuse into the class with the normal replacing of worn parts by new ones.And this brings me to the third point in this sublisting of three.
The F16 class should not fear meeting challenges like this by rather opening the class rules then create more or more restrictive versions of them. In addition we should only allow the class rules to rule in the most general sense possible and try to avoid ruling on details.
An example: Carbon beams can be glued to the hulls resulting in a stiff platform that can’t be disassembled for international transport or repairs c.q. replacements. This would have given an unacceptable advantage to sailors who are local to the site of an international event or an F16 boat builder. Both in performance and cost because crews from far away are effectively forced to have boats that can be fully disassembled. The class could have chosen to outlaw carbon beams altogether, but it did not. The point of conflict was the inability to fully disassemble the boat into easily transportable parts. So a class rule was added that required F16 boats to be able to be fully disassembled.It must also not be forgotten that if people want to spend lots of money on their boats then they will always find a way to do just that. In strict one-design fleets you will see these sailors with a new suit of sails at every event. This still doesn’t mean that they will perform significantly better because of it.
Without getting into detailed discriptions I would like to present the following facts to underscore that we must always keep an open mind to new ideas, new materials and new design features and not automatically assume rising costs or implied inferiority of the old way of doing things. We will do well remembering that.
• The Stealth F16 with full carbon hulls, carbon masts and a suit of Landenberger Pentex sails is still the most inexpensive F16 available and has been for years now, At 13.500 Euro’s (incl. taxes) it is well underpriced compared to any modern (but often glass based) one-design or formula boat available today.
• Kevlar hull construction on the Blade F16 hulls is a mere 300 US$ upgrade from the standard hulls construction. Kevlar hulls are the most dent and damage resistant hulls available today.
• The Goodall aluminium superwing mast section and the Taipan 4.9 were designed and first produced in the second halve of the 1980’s. The Taipan sailplan and low aspect daggerboards are vintage of that era. However, Glenn Asby himself commented a few years back that this Taipan design was still a good match for the modern A-cats, like the flyer, in very light winds.
• The G-cat F16, a boardless design, was wrecking havoc among boarded F16’s at this years Tradewinds regatta despite being in it prototype stage.
• Mosquito F16’s, based on a 35 year old design, have been handled by the owners into a reputation of sheer competitiveness in relation to the modern F16 designs. That is what a “can-do” mentality can achieve.
These 5 points above bring us back to the decision of the founders of the Formula 16 class to allow development of the F16 setup. To some extent this issue has already been covered but not in one important aspect. Allowing development stimulates a healthy level of class activity and creates a thriving second hand market. Both can not be overstated in importance.
Development attracts home-builders, boat designers and part suppliers to the F16 class. The constant turn-over makes their efforts either enjoyable or profitable. This gives the class a lively feel and makes it exiting to be part of. This alone creates class growth. When class rules become too strict or the designs become stagnant then designers and home-builders are not tickled anymore and running a boat building business or supply shop becomes economically unfeasible. Support drops away, promotion winds down as volunteers are doing more of the same and serious racers will feel “the choking of the tie” and start looking elsewhere where things are “happening”. The class will stall and can go into tail spin well before most class members realize it. It must be remembered that no class can survive on class members who are unwilling to buy new gear and sustain the turnover. Coincidentally it’s these very same class members who are championing the cause of slowing down development to a trickle. It is my experience that a class must aim to keep the builders, suppliers, designers, home-builders and active sailors happy; sometimes even as far as at the cost of some of the more conservative class members. It is the first group that truly carries the class; the others will follow were ever the first group goes, although they will never publically admit to that. Especially not at class ballots. Any class official must fully understand this dynamic.
A thriving second hand market is important because it allows interested sailors to get into the class and taste it for a relatively modest investment. When it lives up to their expectations then they will most often buy a new boat themselves, thus growing the class while passing their old boat on to the next generation. This cycle can be repeated several times in the life span of a single boat or even a single specific design. In this role it is not very important whether the aging boat is fully competitive or not. The skill level associated with this cycle is by far too inferiour for these inequalities to matter. Of course an active secondhand market also maintains a good resale value for both the boats and the various components. This makes it attractive for top sailors to sell off their gear sooner rather then later thus creating a quicker turn-over that benefits all. It even benefits the low budget sailors as they can now maintain their boats at pretty good competitive level for very affordable prices. It also makes the racing more equal as it will see all crews sail with gear that is relatively young and up to date. The yearly improvements don’t get enough time to accommulate into a significant inequality.
We must never forget this multifacetted nature of our formula 16 class and we must take great care to not let it be disrupted.
We are nearing the end of my brief and I would now like to dedicate a few words to the singlehanded (1-up) – doublehanded (2-up) duality of the F16 class. The founders actively intended both setups to be fully developped inside the F16 class. The dual role of the F16 boats has always been actively promoted and stimulated. It is our unique signature and sets us apart from any other catamaran class on the market today.
With it the founders sought to remedy the “crew blues” that we all have encountered at one time or another. Therefor the 1-up and 2-up setups were actively designed to show equal performance around the course and it was envisioned that both setups would share the same start, the same course and the same final listing. Thus each boat owner is assured a racing fleet irrespectably whether a crew was arranged or not.
This requirement to have this shared final listing does not, however, forbid separate listings for the 1-up and 2-up configurations, possibly with their own prizes.
The dual role nature of the F16 class and the underlying spirit of welcoming new idea’s brings me to my last point. The F16 class has always been a team effort of committed volunteers based on the concept of inclusiveness. And I feel strongly that this is were our strength comes from and that we should continue on this course. The grandfather clause is one individual aspect that reflects the founders dedication to inclusiveness and I believe it is a great tool for further class growth. Otherwise it will be a great tool to keep the F16 sailors sharp ! In this spirit I highly value our combined events like the Gulfport A-cat / F16 invitationals, the Datchet FX-one / F16 1-up championship and the various F18 / F16 wagers.
The first 5 years of the F16 class have now come to end, during that time volunteers have build and maintained the class without asking for any membership contributions or compensations. Everyone did their bit. Many events were organised by unpaid volunteers. Senior sailors introduced new sailors to the class and then helped them with their first steps. A handful of homebuilders have notably advanced the general F16 design without a care to see their efforts repayed in hard currency. Countless officials from other organisations have helped us through vital stages and some famous catamaran designers took time out to talk to us and benefit us with their wisdom. Then generous persons donated both money and resources to the class so we could have a webpage, charter boats, leaflets and a forum by which to build our class.
I can’t possibly name and thank them all personally as the listing will be endless and in many cases I may not even know of their contributions myself. I do really believe that each contribution was invaluable in its own right and for that I thank them both personally and as the senior representative of the Formula 16 class. This shall be my last official action as the acting chairman.
On a personal note I would now like to express my gratitude to my fellow founders of the class; Phill Brander and Kirt Simmons, for their support and their faith in this thing that we started together. This has truly helped me a lot over the years.
I will now join you guys in wishing the class all the success it deserves and move to the sidelines.
Wouter Hijink 30th April 2006 |
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