One year on ,carbon allowed yet in the build. You know it makes sense.

boring comment, been said before.

your allowed 3-4 sets of sails a year or a new boat whenever you like but spend £150 more for carbon not yet.(the cloth)
It's my guess that when the number of 20 kilo+ underwieght boats outnumber the oldens then carbon & a weight drop will come. 5 maybe 10 yrs, thats development.
boring? again maybe but ultimatly a good bet. regards Barry.

What I don't get is that the International 14 has already gone all the way down the evolutionary track from what was essentially the same boat (am I not correct in saying that the original Merlin was a I14?)

Why would we want to drive all the way toward this when, if you don't like the Merlin like it is, there are plenty of 14' carbon boats out there?

I'm with Jon 100%.  When you look at the large number of pre-loved MRs being traded, refurbished and sailed with passion in the last two months alone, why the hell would anyone want to destroy the class in order to create yet another 14' lightweight racing machine?

No, the original merlin was not an Int 14 but was a rival to them.

Why not build a merlin out of Carbon and to your own rules.  If the boat is that good, develop it into your own class and see if the Merlin fleet suffers.  My guess is that it won't.  If it did, simple, adopt carbon and let the fleet continue to grow.  But why bother.  Dave Winder has certainly done the class more favours by making it mre affordable to sail a merlin. Long live the way things are!  PS I still refuse to buy a mobile phone and think Betamax will make a comeback.

I am disappointed that I don't seem to get telegrams any more.  They were the only decent bit of a wedding!!  However there was some good news for the Meldrews among us - vinyl sales have picked up again!!

Only prob' is in terms of new builds - no matter how healthy the vintage fleet - they (New Builds) are essential to continued progress - it's fast becoming a "restricted" one design.

But allowing carbon in the hull does not mean that hul design will progress as all that will happen to start with is the same shape boats will be built with carbon skins instead of glass.. By not allowing carbon at the present time it does allow for one off wood boats to built to weight fairly easily but we don't see that many new shape boats. Intrestingly enough if you look at the so call real development classes like the Int Moth all the top guys use either a Fastacraft or Linton built boat with slight modifications done each year as Winders have done on their boats.. 
While I would like to see weight limit lowered and carbon allowed in the future I don't think now is the right time to go down that route, just because it doesn't have a carbon hull doesn't mean it ain't modern.. Before anyone says anything I work in the composite industry and work with some of the worlds top yacht designers and engineers..
I love the fact I can still sail my new Winder merlin on the Thames or on open water venues, if I wanted to go all carbon etc I would sail and Int 14..

Absolutely hull design for whatever reason, possibly GRP hulls and the cost of moulds, seems to have if not stagnated slowed down to a crawl, that is until the next spate! Strength not really seeming an issue, wood would seem to be good, I'm sure R' knows far better but isn't carbon still occasionally prone to very sudden enexpected failures even in turbine blades and bits of F1 cars?

I don't have a problem with carbon - but it would be a shame and a little illogical if the class was allowed to head in a direction where it was no longer possible to build a boat down to weight or of sufficient stiffness out of wood, ie. it had to be built of carbon to be competitive. 
I say illogical, because why else would be retain the clinker effect hull if you can't possibly built it that way?

There is little point in building a hull in carbon unless you lower the overall hull weight. OK it might be a bit stiffer but the modern plastic boats are already very stiff and carry up to 25Kg in lead, I suspect the actual advantage would be unmeasurably small.
New boats are of course very important to the class but I would suspect the vast majority of boats that are sailed on a week by week basis are much older. 
I like the fact that you can sail a boat over 40 years old on a restricted venue like Hampton, Tamesis or Upper Thames and give still the modern boats a good thrashing. It would be interesting to see how a well sailed vintage boat performed somewhere like Salcombe in a very light week.
To lower the hull weight would probably change all this, the older boats would find themselves outclassed even on waters where they could at least hold there own. I suspect this would spell the end for a number of blossoming vintage fleets.

2623 was 27th at Salcombe this year.

And that's covered in carbon; QED????

The main problem with carbon is that it's scarce - hence some of the delay in getting masts earlier this year.

There is no problem currently not permitting carbon so why fix it?

I'm not an expert in boat design or hydrodynamics, but surely in any engineering situation where the environmental parameters remain constant then over time the solutions will all gradually aproach the same optimum design - ie. the longer the rules remain the same the closer we will get to a "perfect" Merlin shape for those rules. The conditions aren't truly constant, because of variations in crew weight and venues, but as everyone wants to maintain a balanced boat for all conditions the variations are getting smaller and developement is getting slower.  The only thing that would stimulate an explosion of new hull shapes such as we have had in the past would be a significant change to the rules - like reducing the weight by 25%.  The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that the only way we could have a continuously evolving design would be to have continuously changing rules.  Do we really want this?  I for one very much like the current Merlin the way it is, and if I wanted to sail a ultra-light carbon skiff I would have chosen an RS or something similar.

The National 12's going smooth skin reducing weight etc., didn't cause a building explosion did it.

'I for one very much like the current Merlin the way it is, and if I wanted to sail a ultra-light carbon skiff I would have chosen an RS or something similar.'

And which RS would that be then, the ultra light 400?

Damn, Alex - you beat me to it!

Interestingly the RS400 is quoted as weighing 85 kilos.  It feels much heavier though.

I guess it's that bang up to date aluminium rig and mylar sails they put on it.

I never understood the RS400 weight anyway. They have white ones, red ones and yellow ones, and yet they have no used to have correctors to bring them all to the same weight.  Everybody knows that gellcoat weights and hull lay-ups vary.  Has this changed, or do they all weigh different amounts?

The Merlin is very heavy, but that only matters when you are pulling it up the beach and does not detract from the sailing or the racing.  I think that the clinker is rather quaint, in a pointless way, and i like the idea of the guys at Winder having to build high-tech clinker boats.

Change something when it shows signs of breaking, not too early and not too late.

Antony
M3627

Very heavy compared with what?

I know you're not knocking the fact you think a Merlin is "very heavy" but as a three sail symetrical hiking boat that two relatively normal sized people can sail competetively, are there any classes that are significantly lighter (if at all) that fit that catergory?

Hull weight has effects far beyond pure speed and ease of pulling up the slip!

I've recently crewed in a Topper Xenon, (Rotomould)similar size and shape to my merlin and it weighs a ton when pulling up the slip

The look of a clinker hull is one of the most beautiful things you see on the water. The RS300 shape wins points for amusement value, but nothing else comes close.

As fra as mass production boats and weight is concerned, I once heard that when building a Laser the guy on the production line gets a measured amount of everything and it all goes in, even if the last litre of resin is just poured in the bottom and spread round a bit...

So there we have it. Its not the use of Carbon that those in the know are afraid of, its the fact that once allowed weight reduction becomes a worrying posibility even inevitable. I'd have to agree that effect on the class could be alarming. Its the weight factor that keeps older boats in contention in certain areas, again it's the weight issue that to a large degree dictates the slowing up in hull design and it's only the fact as a 'development' class the topic gets brought up each year. Cost is lets face it a total red herring, yes there would be an increase but far less than a new mast or even a mainsail , many price hypes seen in other classes are due to demand and other factors but held up as a warning to frighten others. 
In short allow carbon where it can be of use but keep the weight issue seperate to ensure the vability & fun of the class . thats my bit, the end. 
                Barry.

We simply dont need to use carbon in the hulls, they are stiff and light enough as we are with E-Glass hulls and Carbon decks.  My boat has over 20kg of lead, and i suspect could be built to need more lead using the current materials allowed. Until a start of any weight rduction which I'm sure will happen in the future we do not need to think about using carbon until such time.   
With regard to earlier comment on carbon failures these are mainly due to the carbon either not being properly engineered or processed correctly.. There are a lot of so called experts who quite frankly do not know as much about composites as they like to think, some appear on this website which keeps us entertained when I'm at work!! ;-)

...ok bad example.  Should have said Int14 not RS.

When Laurie built Pat Blake's old boat 3640, out of WOOD, with carbon sheathed wooden decks and e-glass hull it had best part of 22/23kg of lead, and I suspect 3 years on still does, so as far as carbon hulls are concerned for Merlins it ain't going to happen, so lets park this one.

p.s. if you don't believe me I will post the picture of the sclaes/bare hull being weighed having followed the build process.

Richard, Smart Tart was built out of an odd ply-faced foam filled material hence the weight reduction.  Round and round we go on this argument.  The weight distribution debate has been effectively killed by the continuing competitiveness of a series of "golden" boats from the last decade - Gangsta Paradise, Storm Cloud, Rong Number, Unfinished Business.  We are NOT a development class as the Int14 and Int Moth are, we are a restricted class building to a stable set of rules that have changed incrementally over 60 years.  One advantage of keeping the weight up (and the slipway argument does not really bear credence if you have ever tried recovering a GP14 or Wayfarer up a steep slipway) is to maintain the competitive edge of boats now over 10y old with updated rigs.  This gives a cheap way into competitive sailing in the class for the less well-heeled.  Consider the success of Riders on the Storm a couple of years ago, or indeed Chuft at Salcombe.

Andrew,

I was aware of Smart Tarts build material (refer to my mag article Autumn/Winter 2003) the point I was making was it ain't plastic and it ain't carbon just good old fashioned, but highly effective wood (with a bit of foam sandwich chucked in for good measure!)

And also bespoke and quite expensive compared to the carbon/plastic and other new-build wooden boats?

I used to do skeleton - head first down a bob track at 90mph with your chin as close to the ice as you could get it. The sport had a good approach to all up weight, which affects speed (conversely the more the better) - the weight of the sled and the rider shall not exceed 115kg, if it does the sled should not weigh more than 32 kg. 

Build the boat from whatever but keep the all up weight of boat and crew similar-ish. That carbon is allowed on some bits of the hull but not all doesnt appear to make sense?. Im probably too heavy for a merlin but like it too much to sail anything else. Weight equalisation might provide a chance to even things up a bit and you could allways whip out a couple of pounds of correctors after a big night out!

Intresting comments ,I can see whats being said about the weight and correctors issue. Keep the weight out the ends ,Iwas told by the masters . Carbon availability is not an issue . Cost .Would be less than a wood boat .Keep in the comfort zone boys and girls.Dont want any progress now,do we .

I notice that none of the 'lets-make-it-lighter-because-we-can' brigade have answered Chris M's question.  
What is this three sail, symmetrical spinnaker, hiking dinghy for a normal two person crew with which you feel the Merlin is failing to compete because of weight?

Dear 2big, 
Don't even think about crew weight limitation either upwards or downwards a couple of classes who have done would love to turn the clock back. Envy your b**ls in doing skeleton once got to the top of the drag and chickened out! I may have looked a pansy and probably was but at least I wasn't one of the four admitted to Zermat Sig Hause that day! Light ends of course I can see a swing test coming on! Level the playing field for new or older wooden boats.

We did swing testing 4 years ago - it proved what is obvious really.
The modern light hulls with lead in the middle had lower moments of inertia than wooden boats with no correctors.
On a 14ft boat (relativly short compared to other fast classes) with a tallish rig and 2 crew the difference in the moment of inertia in the whole boat when sailing is very small - maybe insignificant?
We decided that the complication and expense of intoducing swing testing to the whole class was not in the classes best interest - and I think we were proved right.
We are a development class - our boats are constantly evolving but in very small increments - that is just right.

When I was new a Swing test meant that the helm and crews danced to Glen Miller.

Pity we cant design a compartment on the boat that automatically floods when you launch, and thus the water provides the corrector weight...but drains when you come to pull the boat up the beach.

Mags you are a genious!! I have something like that on my albacore its called the bouyancy tanks!!!

If popularity and numbers is your aim, then extra speed would seem to be largely irrelevant. I did some research a couple of years ago, correlating class Nationals (admittedly among faster classes than the merlin) turnout against some other factors. The speed of the boat seemed to have no relevance at all to Nationals turnout. That one thing that did seem to have a big relationship to popularity was % of female crews, and to a quite astonishing extent. I made me think that perhaps only the women should be allowed to vote on a two-handed class' proposed rule changes [joke, OK?].

As the man said, even though it would be extremely easy to design a faster three sail hiking two hander than the Merlin, it has only been done once, with the 400, which after its popular years now seems to be fading with few new boats being built. Making the boat faster to court popularity does not look like a great move.

"even though it would be extremely easy to design a faster three sail hiking two hander than the Merlin, it has only been done once, with the 400"  JimC, how about the MRX and 59er?  Oh, you were comparing Nationals turnouts......   :)

Sailability is a big factor not necessarily speed. I've only crewed in a 400 and despite the cleats on the thwart playing havoc with my piles it did seem like bit of a brute. I've found the merlin to be more novice friendly in the "keep it upright stakes" (although I,ve had my fair share of swims thankyou) than my old fireball with a lightwieght crew on board. The winning point of a merlin is that it can be sailed competetively in most club fleets with all sorts of wieghts on board allied with a choice of design (both new and old) to suit your personal circumstances.

OK, I forgot the 59er. I don't think you can really count the MRX as being a different design to a Merlin:-) The fact that the very neat 59er has sold so few rather reinforces my point...