Hi,

I sailed my first racingcat competition yesterday (read: cat with daggerboards, etc.)
I sailed a Hobie FXOne 2-UP (rating 105).
In one race I came in 2 minutes after the first 5 F18, which practically finished all at the same time. We raced +/- 1 hour, meaning my rating putted me first.

Wind was 4 knots. And my crew weight 130 kg.

How would you compare the performance of the Blade to the FXOne ? (read: would you be able to finish first with a Blade ?)

Can't wait to sail my new Blade ....

Regards,
Gill

Personally I think the FX-one is a better 2-up boat then it is a 1-up boat. I think I have been saying this for years now. At least this is what my personal experience with the FX-one is.


4 knots of wind are often luck-bad luck races. You, or some other crew, can easily have found a wind band or a hole. My own experience is that in these winds from 0 to 5 knots the slower rated boats typically do better on handicap. That is because any time the fleet is caught in a wind hole the clock keeps ticking slower for the slower rated boats. In effect, nobody is going anywhere but the slower boats win time as they are awarded increasingly more time to float around.

I've seen exactly the same thing happen in yesterdays club race of mine. Additionally the slower boats often don't have a spinnaker and a spinnaker in 0-5 knots of wind is often not really helpful. Yesterday alot of spi boats just dropped their spi's as they wouldn't stay filled. They still get the penalty hit for having one though.

Anyway. In general I think the Texel rating difference between the FX-one and F16's is correct. The speed difference is about 3% - 5%.

2 min (120 sec) in one hour racing (3600 sec) is 3.33% time difference. So on this info, I would say that yes, on a F16 you could have been among the pack of 5 F18's and maybe even have come in first. I wrote "could" and not "would" as races in these light winds require alot of skill and a very good portion of luck. Either one of these are unrelated to the type of boat chosen.


But he, don't let this spoil your pleasure in sailing well !!!

Nice going there Gill.

Wouter

From what I have seen so far the speed difference between the FX-One and Blade is not that spectacular. Although I have not yet seen a 1-up Blade so that might be different (The 1-up rating of 100 should say its a lot faster though).
On elapsed time upwind the Blade is a little bit faster and downwind the FX-One.
I think the Brits had a mixed event without rating and showed that they're pretty equal.

How are your experiences with the jib? (Selftacker?)
-Tony

True, and even if we run a fleet of F16's against a fleet of FX-one's there still won't be a clear outcome. It is actually very difficult to see "5% performance difference" when looking at actual fleet racing results. Small differences in crew related skills and luck can easily overpower such a performance difference. Placings without actual sailing times, like the combined FX-one/F16 event in the UK are useless as only the average time over a larger number of sailors and races can hint at a structural difference in performance. Up till now we have not had such a data serie; the F16's and FX-one just don't meet up at events often enough. And certainly not in the numbers that allow the averaging out of crew skills and luck. The data that we do have is often scewed significantly one way or another because one crew is obviously more skilled then another. I can't compete with Dirk Zwitser and the FX-one sailors around me (my club) just aren't of my skill level. Often we see singlehanded sailors on one type race against the 2-up version of another and that is not very helpful in comparing the two boats either.

The only basis of my comments that I do have are my personal experience sailing both boats (at different times) against F18's etc. There is nothing as of yet that suggests to me that Texel is wrong in it performance difference between FX-one and F16. As Texel work remarkably well for so many boats I feel that we should Texel the benefit of the doubt in absense of clearly superiour counter data.

But I do admit freely that I also look at the specs of both boats and the class activity and weight the F16 as slightly faster as a result. Afterall the specs are largely identical with the F16's being significantly lighter and seeing more development. It would really surprise me if the FX-one somehow manages to be equally fast or faster then the F16's. I just don't see any scientific reason how that can be. Barring some F16 designer really screwing up his design. But even in this case, as there are multiple F16 designers and builders, there is always one that is bound to have designed a proper F16.

So here I have explained my earlier comments in more depth. It is up to the reader to determine what is more reasonable.

Good luck all.

Wouter

Hi Tony,

It was not a self-tacking fok.
I must say that we could sail a very sharp angle upwind (I hope you understand what I mean).

I also found that it wasn't really a 2-UP boat. Especially the sail comes very low and it isn't that easy for the co-sailer to pass to the other side...

Regards,

Gill