Now was it a windless year in 2010, or what?? I know we missed quite a few weekends because of "no breeze", and for sure we haven't sailed a honker in absolutely ages. But brace yourselves for this - the team with the highest turnout were our fabulous Club Champions, Mark and Tony. They are simply "always there", aren't they?? They clocked 44 races. That's about 22 Sundays. Team Hume managed 34 as did Andy and Nadia. For family reasons, Howard and I missed many, many weekend sessions but we were next in the league with 33 races. I'm amazed. I must find out from Mike if he has counted the two Opens, the 'Hughes', Club Regatta and Club Championship turnouts.
Anyway - what does this do to my calculation for the cost-of-ownership of a mainsail.?? I had stupidly said it was 3x for Mylar, which as I wrote it I knew must have been wrong. It says that at Datchet we race about the same number of races per year as a Circuit/Nationals player might. 'They' say that a Mylar main lasts 18 months and goes suddenly. They also say that they cost about 20% more than Dacron. My base case assumption was that a Dacron main at Datchet is good for about 2 years, which is probably an underestimate. So roughly what does the shorter life and a 20% price difference give you as an answer ....????
Amazingly, the cost of ownership of a Mylar main is 160% of a Dacron main......
It gets worse quickly if 18 months for Mylar is correct, but a Dacron main goes for 3 years. By the way, Mike asked two more good questions:-
1/ if a Mylar sail is less adjustable to meet prevailing conditions, does that mean you need one for light conditions and one for heavy winds??
2/ If we really did race 80 Datchet races a year, and the sail needed replacing after 60 races, where would we stand on the FF rule that limits you to one new sail a year. Good question.....
I await the next ear-bending from the Admiral to see where I've gone wrong with that.
DM
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