IOMICA Forum

Agreed, Roy. Lester and I talked breifly about this at Fleetwood, and if I remember correclty, we were leaning toward "Black numbers on a White background", regardless of sail color. I agree completely that something should be done about this situation. Clear sails, and colored numbers are sometimes...

HMS 2002 is a great scoring system, by far the best I've seen, used, or talked about. Can it be better? One of the things we talk about often is whether or not it would work better if you had more boats moving up and down. My thoughts are that 6 boats moving up and down in a full 20 boat heat would ...

The Highlander was my first ordered IOM, second to be delivered. It sails very well in light air, but when the wind comes up over about 5 knots, it gets a bit tough to keep up with trim. It shows strong weather helm in the puffs, and is sensitive to mast rake. I never had the opportunity to sail it ...

Hello, Ed. Welcome to the class. Where will you be sailing?

In 2002, only 5 spots were held open for non-Europeans. The 5 spots were filled, but I don't think there was much more interest than that. This year, it appears different. The outside countries may need to come up with some way to "decide" who get to go if there is alot of interest. I'm sure Canada ...

A few of us in the USA have expressed interest in going to the European Championship. Has Arcos been officially named as host? When can we expect more information?

A few things to remember: The slower your boat is going, the stronger the apparent wind, thus pushing the bow down. Make sure your sails are sheeting out just slightly ahead of the turn, but not luffing so much that you lose speed. You can help this by making sure your sheeting angles are allowing t...

No, not necessarily a mandate, but a proper evaluation of a venue before travellers make a large monetary commitment to travel. Put it this way, if you had a pond at the end of your street that had a pier for 3 people to stand on, and only enough distance to sail a small triangle, or a top notch, ma...

Greg, it really does not matter where you put it, so long as it is in the origin of the mast, so you can measure from it, to your lower mast band on all rigs. Considering a skiff, If you are asking where I would put it, it would go as low as possible (in the cockpit where the mast goes into the step...

It's meant to be a circle, 5mm diameter. It can technically be placed anywhere in the mast step area. BUT, at the worlds last summer, my boat had the mark on the vertical bulkhead just forward of the mast. The event measurer made me move it, cause he could not accurately place a measuring tape to it...

My experience with triangle courses and R/C sailing has shown little positive results. Most importanly, a proper reach mark would certainly take you too far away to judge the mark well, as well as see other boats' numbers (a properly set reach is a right angle turn). It is not possible to properly p...

Quote: "Are you thinking about some specific words that we use that aren't defined anywhere" Well, the thought came to mind when I read the post regarding a jib boom with a "topping lift" that was forward of the luff. There is no topping lift in the ERS, but it is an optional piece of rigging allowe...

So what do you think, Lester? Would it be a Topping Lift? I'd think not (I'm guessing you do too), since the luff is still supporting that end.

Col, forcing someone to keep a DSQ is changing the RRS. While this can be done in the SI's, I would recommend highly against it. If you were to force competitors to keep DSQ's, you would never see a protest go to the jury. While protests take away from time on the water in our sport, it is still an ...

I would be in favor of dropping the discards if we could sail "weed free". Unfortunately, that will never happen. Weed is something that you have absolutely no control of while sailing R/C. On big boats, at least you have the opportunity to see it in the water and steer around it. We can't. Taking a...

There are many items in the IOM rule that are not defined in the ERS. Maybe we should make one for the class that covers the items we use that arent covered. What do you all think?

Nigel, I don't think it is legal based on the way the rule is currently written. Although the ERS does not specify what a topping lift is, the name itself implies that you are "lifting" something. The forward line in effect controls the same part of the sail (leech), but it is pulling it down, not l...