Hello everyone,
It has been over five years since I had to defend the honor of the Isotope but you can only poke a caged bear for so long.

The Isotope is a one-design catamaran. The Isotope class association has rules on what you can do to the boat if you want to race against us. It is pretty simple everything below the water stays the same, you can do what you want to with the rigging just so it uses no more than 185sqft of soft sail calculated by the formula 40 method. Yes, over the years we have had to break out the tape measure and square but after marking them there is very little whining.

To accuse us of not being a beachcat realy seems pointless. Not that I could argue, its just we don't like you.

The Isotope has a Portsmith Rating of .74 not bad for a boat designed in the early 60's. The realy awesome aspects of the boat are its ability to point a layline very high up. I realize there are faster boats out there but I have never been outpointed by any catamaran, even yours Trey. Also it is a boat designed around a lower average wind speed. This translates in being a giant killer in wind speeds lower than 5knots. As we are lake sailors if we a moving we are racing, if we are not moving we are still racing and in wind over 15 to 20 we are headed for the beach.

The nature of the boat fits perfectly with its sailors and with the future of catsailing. A boat that can be singlehanded, a boat that can be raced at the local lake, and has an active fleet to have head to head racing. I have been sailing an Isotope for 17 years and have no intention of switching to another boat.



J.P.Ayers
Isotope 186