The best boats are those with a blend of old and new, chosen not because of an era, but soly on its own merits. Many new ideas are huge improvements , others are just fads that will quickly pass. Some older ways of doing things are as valid today as they ever were . For others we have learned better ways of doing things.
Clinging dogmaticaly to either traditon or modern will have us rejecting many really good ideas , not on the basis of their merits, but soly on the basis of their era, reducing the quality and function of our boats, and making sailing more difficult and less enjoyable than it could be. .
Roller furling jibs are a huge improvement over having to go on the foredeck to change
sails. My slab reffing , re-invented in the 70's and called "California Reefing" was the same reefing that Drake used in the 1500's . I can reef in under a minute and have seen nothing new that has been an improvement. Witness the
mast going for and aft in ten year cycles , from big mains and tiny foretriangles , to tiny mains and big fore triangles, then back again, with us being told each time that it's a modern breakthru and nothing else willl
work.
Witness people being told that only bendy masts will win races , and boats showing up for races with several masts on trailers,as they expected to break some. Then the Kiwis won the Americas cup with a
mast as stif as a brick. Instantly those bendys, the only ones that could possibly win races were instantly outdated.
Sit back , take everything with a grain of
salt , and judge ideas soly by how well they work. Don't be shy about going against the grain when the truth seems to clearly be separated from fact, or promotion seems to be about separating you from your freedom chips.
Brent