2.0.0.4 with Adblock, DOM Inspector, Talkback and VideoDownloader. It's no big thing as I used our MS computer and had a look with IE.


What the hey are you doing up at this time of night? I am awake becouse our two years old have some fever and refuse to sleep, but would much prefer to be in bed instead of thinking about re-routing of spi-halyards

"!Curved tracks even with a spi? What would the advantage be unless the boats dont build much apparant wind when going downhill?"

Thats the point , these highly developed cats (!) carry a symmetrical spinnaker with spinnaker pole mounted on mast and gybed !, they can run dead downwind , not a lot of apparent wind sailing going on there .(admittedly class rules probably preclude an assymetric )

But as Jalani points out they did come up with stuff long before others , most noteably the spin chute which they had for decades , which has now been accepted by cat sailing and changed the whole game for the better , suppose flying a symetrical spin from one didn't look too cool .

Seeing we're going off the subject slightly here, I take it that I'll have to accept the fact that F16's are approx 10% slower than an 'A' upwind. It could take 30yrs of development to reach the speed they are currently achieving in which time they would also have increased their speed so no net gain there. The only way to compete against F18's is to be launched (not delivered) at birth.
I guess I was looking for a more positive response on how the Class would improve performance within the current rules. Although, It is good to see that some people are willing to experiment, Scooby and his super, super long centreb'ds, 1*1 and their spi halyard system.
So is anybody else willing to put forward any ideas which they have thought about to improve F16 boat speed?

Mark,

people may not like this, but.....

I think to improve we need to spend more time on the water and stop making mistakes (I put myself firmly in this camp). Spi hoists when done well don't loose much in the transition, ditto the drop. But do it wrong and you loose 100's of meters.

Yes there is also more speed to be gained out of the boats with better design and setup, but I also think there is a lot more to be gained out of us.

What direction do we move in design wise ?. Boats are now getting down to weight. I think my longer plates are faster. Someone is playing with Spi halyard routing. My (and your) mainsails look much better for single handing. What's next ? Better Wing masts ? Better hull shapes ? Better sails ? Do we have another large step to take in boat performance?, or will we just chip away at it? I don't know.

But it is fun......

The largest variable factor will always be the nut on the tiller.

After that, in my opinion, the next biggest factor is weight. However, we can assume that, over the next couple of years newer boats will get down to the minimum for class rules.

Thereafter the largest gains have to be in the rig. Reducing windage, weight aloft, better mast profiles etc. We are already borrowing hugely from the sail developments of other classes.

In the short term therefore, the most cost effective gains are undoubtedly to be had in improving our individual performances via time on the water and also by makig our boats more friendly to sail - improving systems so that they are easy to use and effective in all conditions.

just my twopenn'orth...

I dont think we will see major tech leaps either. But sometimes an enterprising soul comes up with something new, like the T-foils. There is a lot we could try, but it would make things more complicated. E.g. telescoping spi-poles, canting rigs, true wave piercing hulls, banana foils etc. Most of it limited by our rules, which is a good thing.

Put a really good sailor on the F-16 and an average sailor on the A/F-18 and see what happens. Speed is mostly in our heads

It would be interesting to put an A class rig on one of our platforms and then compare. I for one think that as a single hander we are carrying too much sail area ( we tend to have the downhaul on a longway sometimes and thus create a very draggy and inefficient sail ) and that if we reduced it to a high aspect sail similar to the A class with similar masts then we wouldn't be down 10% performance incurred by the extra weight, snuffer windage.

The other thing also was that with John P on the helm he was right in amongst the A's at Mumbles 06, perhaps we need to get ourselves up to speed by 10%.

Don't forget this thread is about upwind speed not all round boat speed. The race I was originally talking about the 'A' was 10% quicker upwind but I was 12% quicker downwind and won. However, the following race the 'A' won and also won the regatta on count back (No prizes for guessing who but we were using his scoring software!!)