- Joined
- Nov 22, 2002
- Messages
- 988
It seems that some one lodged a protest against my boat in IMPBA.
A little history first.
In the mid 90's I decided to get back into sport 40 with the intent of going after a nationals title. Russ Natchweih had a new design that I decided to try. The boat was good but not what I wanted. I spent the next couple of years reworking what I thought to be the problems with the boats that were available at the time. The boat progressed quickly. Russ won a nationals with a set of the prototype sponsons. I set about every NAMBA record there was with a wood version of my current boat. Gary Preusse set a bunch af IMPBA records with a wood boat. People started calling wanting me to produce the boats so I started building wood/glass composite boats. It soon became apparent that I needed to go all glass. I made a couple of minor changes to make the boat easier to pull from a mold and built molds. Eric Bourlet and I have now won several NAMBA nationals in sport 40 and 40 hydro with the glass version that has now been in production for 9 years with alot of that production going east.
Jump ahead to today. I was contacted by an IMPBA official saying that the air traps were to wide for the IMPBA rules. I suggested that people could simply add a thin piece of wood to the bottom of the airtrap to get it down to the allowed 1/8 inch. He said that what he interpretted the drawing in the rule book to mean was that no part of the air trap could be wider than 1/8. This was one of the mods that I made to make the boat easier to pull from the mold. I simply brought the non trip down to the bottom of the air trap. From his interpretation a glass boat would have to have wood airtraps added. You can not pull a straight 1/8 inch wide plate from a mold. He sent me a copy of the rule book and I see no written rule about air traps just a drawing that shows a simple dimension. The way that the dimension is drawn it looks to me that it is referencing the width of the bottom. I was of the impression that the rule was to keep from making the bottom of the air trap from becoming a riding surface. Narrowing the bottom to the 1/8 seems like it would accomplish this.
I am writting this to give all of my customers a heads up on what is going on. I hope it can be worked out.
Mark
A little history first.
In the mid 90's I decided to get back into sport 40 with the intent of going after a nationals title. Russ Natchweih had a new design that I decided to try. The boat was good but not what I wanted. I spent the next couple of years reworking what I thought to be the problems with the boats that were available at the time. The boat progressed quickly. Russ won a nationals with a set of the prototype sponsons. I set about every NAMBA record there was with a wood version of my current boat. Gary Preusse set a bunch af IMPBA records with a wood boat. People started calling wanting me to produce the boats so I started building wood/glass composite boats. It soon became apparent that I needed to go all glass. I made a couple of minor changes to make the boat easier to pull from a mold and built molds. Eric Bourlet and I have now won several NAMBA nationals in sport 40 and 40 hydro with the glass version that has now been in production for 9 years with alot of that production going east.
Jump ahead to today. I was contacted by an IMPBA official saying that the air traps were to wide for the IMPBA rules. I suggested that people could simply add a thin piece of wood to the bottom of the airtrap to get it down to the allowed 1/8 inch. He said that what he interpretted the drawing in the rule book to mean was that no part of the air trap could be wider than 1/8. This was one of the mods that I made to make the boat easier to pull from the mold. I simply brought the non trip down to the bottom of the air trap. From his interpretation a glass boat would have to have wood airtraps added. You can not pull a straight 1/8 inch wide plate from a mold. He sent me a copy of the rule book and I see no written rule about air traps just a drawing that shows a simple dimension. The way that the dimension is drawn it looks to me that it is referencing the width of the bottom. I was of the impression that the rule was to keep from making the bottom of the air trap from becoming a riding surface. Narrowing the bottom to the 1/8 seems like it would accomplish this.
I am writting this to give all of my customers a heads up on what is going on. I hope it can be worked out.
Mark