It is true that my homebuild F16 (fully sloop rigged) is 120 kg and it doing pretty well against other boat types. But still this doesn't mean that it is easy to design and commercially produce F16 boats.

For starters my boat is fast but the new designs are better. In the way of weight the difference is easy to spot. The new commericial F16's in standard (alu) attire are 107 to 110 kg (ready to sail). That is 10 kg difference and as we all know losing the last few kg's is the hardest.

The difference in platform stiffness between these new F16's and my homebuild is stunning. If I lay up my platform on its sterns and lift one bow then the other bow will sit 60 mm lower. On the new commercial F16's this measurements is 15 mm. That is an improvement by a factor of 4; while at the same time being 10 kg lighter !

And as such there are other differences as well. If Nacra designs and produces an F16 then they need to compete with these new commercial F16's and not with my homebuild.

In principle nacra can do it, technology wise we are not doing any NASA stuff. However figuring out how to do can be time consuming as all builders treat this expertise as trade secrets AND as a company you have to build up a very good quality control policy. Especially the latter is a challenge for larger commercial builders as nacra found out in the past years. Without a very tight company wide quality control policy you can forget about building dependable A-cats or F16's.

But lets get back to the Inter 17 discussion.


Warbird, find out for us WHICH type that inter-17 on offer actually is. I strongly suspect it is the Aussie designed and build Inter-17 which is significantly different from the US I-17R and F17's. Scoobies US build but EU type inter-17 is probably closest to this Aussie version of the Inter-17.

Wouter