roughtly speaking the tipweight for an F16 can be estimated by taking halve of the weight of the bare mast section and adding 0.75 kg.

For the Superwing alu mast this comes out at 15/2 + 0.75 = 8.25 kg. I've seen several measurements and they are indeed 8.00 kg and just over.

Ever since this carbon mast discussion started back in 2001 a good rule of thumb for carbon F16 masts was 1.1 kg per meter mast section. Thus arriving at : (1.1 * 8.5)/2 + 0.75 = 5.43 kg tipweight. Despite the fact that I can't really quote actual measurements as per agreement I can say that I have yet to be made aware of a carbon F16 mast that is significantly below this number. Even the newest carbon mast that I'm aware off is said by the owner/builder to be 400 grams under the 6.00 kg tipweight. At this time he uses no mainsail halyard.

The above data comes from two well known carbon mast builders, although the dates of this info are 2001 and 2002. (the newest carbon mast mentioned above is an exception and this data is from 2007)

Naturally an 4.25 to 4.75 kg tipweight carbon A-cat mast can be used on a F16, but I wouldn't expect that to be dependable when 2-up sailing under spinnaker as seen at the Alter Cup. As the saying goes, every vessel claims mastery of floatation in a calm seastate. As of yet I have trouble understanding how a 2-up carbon F16 mast can have the very same tipweight as the modern A-cat masts and still be very robust while loaded up heaps more and a few carbon A-cats masts breaking each year after capsizes.

But of course I'm not a carbon mast builder and I really like invite a professional carbon mast builder to go publically on record and provide us all with dependable and updated (2007) data. And personally I would like to see the claims being proven in reality by building such a mast and measuring/testing it in real life.

So who is capable of getting Hall spars, Fibrefoam (Scott Anderson), Saarberg, Riba or any other well known carbon mast builder to go on record on this ?

Wouter