I saw this on another forum

F...ing idiots.
Should not be allowed to own a boat, or anything mechanical for that matter.
They risked their crews safety to prove which of the skippers had the bigger men's vegetable.

Really? A single short video is enough to condemn all racing and the participants involved? The boats were reefed, kites up for sure but then they got a big gust and the boats were on edge. I am sure that any of the forum members could have a 30 second incident where they do something stupid or stuff up somehow. If it was videoed and posted on another site there could be equally inaccurate comments on why you shouldn't ever go out on a cruising boat.

I like cycling, sailboarding, bodysurfing and many more activities that can end up with bad things happening. And the size of my manliness does not enter into it. Sailboat racing can be an absolute blast in heavy air, close racing, a hairsbreadth away from calamity and your senses at full alert. Also the sailing skills you learn and require to sail like this makes you a far better sailor (in terms of skill level) than the cruiser who has never raced. So crossing bars, surfing a wave, getting onto the foredeck to clear a tangle, getting a kite up and down, (basically anything to do with foredeck work) knowing when to tack in a heavy sea, bringing a boat alongside someone in the water, judging when it is safe to cross another boat and much more are all all skills that are highly developed through racing. Learn the skills by racing and then throttle back when cruising to be a far safer cruiser.

I can't afford to break boats like this so I race much cheaper dinghies but that is more a function of my wallet than anything else.

"who dares wins"

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt.

Couple of points;
Those skippers don't own the boats.
Sailing at that level is a team sport, at the top mark all the crew would have made the call to go a kite because their training would have indicated to them that the conditions were within the limits of using a kite.
Its racing because you take calculated risks to gain an advantage. It didn't work out in this instance but crews on those boats would have accepted that as part of racing.
This is my 43rd season racing, I accept that there is a personal risk and a risk to the equipment. I race because it's good for me and not to impress anyone else.

I am no racing man, but it looks to me that one boat was overtaking. Should that overtaking boat not have kept clear by a larger distance?

wait, there are other forums?

funny how the mast broke so low down, at the spinnaker pole, yet it did not seem to be loaded very much at that point.
I would have expected to see it collapse more around the spreaders, as is more common.

Wasn't there a recent thread asking how strong your pole needed to be?

Should have used line from Bunnings for spin halliards and sheets, would have saved the mast. :)

Match racing is a bit nuts. It is far more about using the rules to eke out a penalty, so if you're not swapping paint you're probably not doing it right.
Fleet racing in my experience is nothing like match racing, if you tried the tactics used in match racing you'd let the whole fleet past you as you luff each other up to over the horizon.

Edit: We probably looked like that on Sat night, thankfully without the broach, can't say the same for the poor leeward boat we were passing.
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