Ok, so far we have recommendations for long hull lengths with high-volume bows, which certainly makes sense. In this camp we have votes for:
- Supercat 20 with standard rig, very hard to pitchpole but with comments that it can be a very wet ride going fast. Also a vote for the 19.
- Mysteres 6.0 (and the whole line?) has very buoyant bows
- Nacra 20 buoyant bows, some say the rear beam hits a lot in the chop
- ARC 21
- Nacra Infusion
The FX-1 will stuff but is apparently hard to actually pitch.
The other approach recommendation is for T-foils even on a 16 foot boat, specifically the Stealth in this case. Being able to sail one-up or two-up sounds like a nice advantage with the smaller boat.
Would anyone be willing to make a ranked list of all the designs you've sailed, say on a scale to 10 with 10 being the ideal performance? The format could look like this:
Boat Model----Stuffing resistance----Pitching resistance----Speed----Fun to Sail
Hobie 18 _____________5 __________________6 ____________5 ________6
Hobie 16 _____________2 __________________3 ____________3 ________5
Some of you have sailed many boat types, so it would be great to learn from your comparisons. (The numbers I mentioned are just examples).
Jeremy, thanks for the offer of advice! Apparently I just missed your store hours, so I'll try again on Tuesday.
It's a off-topic for this thread, but if someone would like to see the (beautifully-designed) WETA's ability to handle heavy wind, here's a nice video of it. You can certainly trip them over their bows and the righting procedure doesn't sound so speedy:
http://www.norbanks.com/NorBankSailing_video/04/index.htmNice pitchpoles at 1:30 and 2:40, among others. Not what I'm looking for right now, but they're definitely cool boats.
Back to the beach cats, thanks for all of your inputs so far! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
