Ofcourse we also planned to suit up with daggerboards to race F16, but right now we are more than satisfied with the boat performance.
Personally I think that having a skeg is attractive. I see a market share for an inexpensive F16 boat that is very performant but not totally geared towards racing. I do get quite a number of inquiries from people wanting an F16 because of its low weight, good looks and versatility but for which 14.500 Euro's is too steep. We try to get these people to second hand boats but there are only so many around of these. Always too few !
The Nacra 500 is selling well overhere without any class structure or racing precisely for the reasons of it being good looking, reasonably performant and inexpensive at 10.000 Euro's. I can see the RC16 fill that gap from the F16 side of the market.
And of course when these recreational sailors want to race once or twice a year then having a set of well designed skegs will not be an objection to them; afterall a well designed set of these will maintain a pretty good upwind performance relative to boarded cats. The difference is not more then 1 minute per 45 minute windward/leeward racing. These recreational racers will already loose in the order of 5-10 minutes in such a race due to lacking sailor skills, even when the are relatively skilled.
Yes, I do see some market potential for the RC16; but ONLY if it is lightweight enough. That is critical !
Also, if I may, the deck on the hulls can be tidied up a little bit to improve the looks. Also this is very important in making the sail. A smooth well curved deck is halve the sale in my experience.
Also F16arg, we as the F16 class have a class deal on the Superwing wingmast design. You can have a set of these masts for cost price. This is an excellent lightweight mast that has stood up to any abuse extremely well. It will need diamond wires but that is not a big cost factor if you make your own glass or carbon fibre fixed length spreader arms. That two is cheap and lightweight. The bare 8.5 mtr section weights 14 kg's and is the lightest mast on the market for 16 foot boats.
If you are making an official F16 then you can use this mast. With this mast and a 15 sq. mtr. mainsail a lightweight boat will start to approximate A-cat performance. Of course with such an F16 mast you can make use of the sail development that has been done so far. Several sailmakers are offering custom F16 sails, optimized for that setup. The right sails are halve the performance !
There are also lightweight F16 optimized beams available for any F16 builder. These are custom designed and extruded beams of high yield stress aluminium for the F16. They weight 4.1 kg per beam if I remember correctly and are as stiff as 90x2 round alu sections. These also have integrated trampoline tracks and have flat bottom and upper sections so it is easier to fit spacers inside the beam and fast fittings to the beams.
although we are going to power up rig soon as speed is too good, so we are wondering performance with a full racing rig.
I expect it to be pretty good.
Looking over the pictures I like the use of the spray rails along the hulls. From the Spitfire sailors I hear this works well to keep the crew more dry then usual.
Best of luck and please do keep us informed.
Wouter
