Please explain why a new boat made of carbon would be made so much heavier than the class minimum weight? Seriously, I do not understand. And why would anyone pay so much for a boat that starts off being so much heavier than minimum? Again, I truly do not understand, so I am looking just for straightforward answers. Thanks in advance.
The weight for a sloop rigged Taipan is 102kg. This is for a glass boat that
- Has no spinnaker gear
- Much less volume in the hulls
- Very small and underbuilt beams.
- Boat is not truly built to take the loads of a spinnaker boat including hull volume.
Yet, the F16 class rules were based of the Taipan 4.9 with a few extra kgs tagged on for spinnaker gear.
There are still a lot of people who believe 107kg is too light for a glass boat with alloy beams and mast, especially if the beams and hulls are built to a size and volume need to remain competitive as a spinnaker boat.
Adding carbon costs $$$. Every other class knows this. AHPC is, and Narca will likely produce a boat 20kg heavier without the extensive use of exotics because they believe they can still produce a boat that will be competitive with the current fleet, engineering in more volume and platform stiffness. If they spent more $$$ and built it out of carbon, down to 107kg, then the boat would be quicker however it will be significantly more expensive. They would also unlikely sell many boats despite the performance advantage.
Not everyone here will share these views, but many outside this F16 forum do.
The Taipan is 30+ year old technology.
As Hans seems to point out above, 1 builder elects to take the easy rout in building a boat and there ends up being a group of bandwagon fans adopting their sales pitch as gospel.
F18 beams, castings and foils are not required to make a stiff boat. It is just being lazy and using what you had to cut cost. Read other reports here on boat comparison and boats like the Falcon are just as stiff by using lighter purpose made extrusions and parts. A light weight round tube is much stiffer than the heavy square F18 beam used on the Viper. The Raptor, Bim and the other designs using this are likely as stiff if not more so without the weight penalty.
There are all glass and aluminum rigs out there that are pretty close to the weight. There are glass boats with carbon rigs I know that are at min. Cost wise a quick search shows that there is not any significant difference in cost, in fact depending on the exchange rate that day, some of the lighter boats are even less expensive.
Nacra gets built in the same shop and someone is surprised they have a boat weighing the same heavy amount. I am sure they saw the 104 game in their big local market of France and people obviously willing to still purchase way overweight boats and finally elected to try and enter the F16 game. Remove some controls, slap a little more cheap resin in the thing and try to keep your warranty costs to a minimum. Put some of the top racers on boats at boats at bigger events, so you have podium finishes and then put a spin on how these things need to be there. They need to be there so the builder can make more money on their sales, not because the rule set requires it.
Weight is already a highly over compensated for factor and beaten to death on the beach and in these kind of forums. If you want to buy a Nacra or a Viper then do so. Because they have a marketing story, do not spout it as gospel as it is not entirely true. If having light boat matters to you then buy that way. If no one buys a heavy boat, then you will quickly see these guys start making a min weight model. A class can easily be built even lighter than min. The 16 could as well , given the right design, process and tooling. This is without exotics. It’s business. If the class does not require it with their buying power why should the builders care.
