I have sailed both the Inter 18 and Tiger but not the Nacra F18.

I agree that the Tiger dives sooner than the Inter 18 but it dives no sooner than the New Nacra F18. The last two are pretty equal.

I found the Inter18 to be a alround decent F18 which will get you in the top end of the fleet in normal club and weekend races. It is a better boat than the pre 2000 Tiger which featured a pinhead mainsail and a shitty jib. I never liked the Hobie spinnakers, HOWEVER, the Tiger platform is sound and good. If my memory serves me right Hobie made a few changes after 2000 like adding subdescks for extra stiffness and the reintroduction of the squaretop mainsail. Post 2000 Tigers are as good as F18's generally come. Ofcourse Nacra decide not to modify their existing Inter 18 but to design a new platform. I hope this gives a feel of what to expect.

The Inter 18 was better than the older Tigers and looks to be slightly less than the newer Tiger versions (Hobie Tiger One-design racing is plain BS as the boats were modified and something noticably differ in performance)

This makes the Inter 18 a good inexpensive boat to start F18 racing on. If you loose to a tiger than it is definately sailor skill than the boats. Only in the very top will the very small difference between (newer and older version of ) boats show. The F18 concept in this respect is sound and it works.

The mainbeam on the Inter 18 is indeed farther forward than what is expected. In general I think the standard supplied Inter sails are better then a the hobie supplied sails with the Tiger. (I will probably get flamed for this but that is my experience)

I have never sailed the Dart Hawk but I think that that boat has a bad reputation. With a new set of good sails (Landeberger ?) and a few mods in the jibsetup and such, I think this boat will rock again. You must be able to pick a few up in the UK for a very decent price.

Given the price (not to high) I think an Inter, Tiger and Dart are very good secondhand boats to start F18 racing on. It depends on the way they are fitted out and the year of building to determine which is the better choice. F18 gradually imporves on the designs; theirfor any 8 year old design will be less optimal than a 2 year old design. This applies to all boats HOWEVER the differences are to small to matter to anybody but the top sailor. Don't expect disadvatages of more than 60 to 100 sec per hour between the two extremes (very old to very new) When assuming both design have new sails and properly maintained gear. Between boats of the same age the differences are much smaller.

All the rest is just caused by sailor skill.

Wouter