This thread was originally a question about planing hull cats vs. displacement hull cats with spinakkers, but was quickly hijacked to become an advert for Bill`s new boat, while at the same time gave Bill an opportunity to discredit designers of other boats :Quote from Bill Roberts, after hijacking this thread to turn it into an advert for his products :'"All boats that fly spinnakers have lee helm". Only boat designs that place the daggerboard in the classical position, approximately at the shroud chainplate, have lee helm with the spinnaker up. This is a system design that has ignored the spinnaker during the design phase of the boat development and the designer/manufacturer expects the sailing public to put up with it. There is a sail/boat design system that does take this CE migration into account. The design system is called "shared lift" and it is incorporated into ARC products. It has to do with shifting the board location forward so that the CE with spin up cannot get in front of the board. Then down sizing the board and up sizing the rudder so that the shared lift between the board and rudder is in the correct effective location for sailing the boat as sloop.'
That`s wonderful news. He then goes on to tell us how any beach cat that was designed by anyone else has terrible tendencies to kill, maim & frighten the hell out of anyone, while his boats are built with only SAFETY in mind. I hope he has good legal counsel, from what I understand you can get sued in the US for looking at someone funny, never mind calling them an irresponsible yacht designer : "I see nothing but praise for the H16 on this forum. In West Palm Beach, Florida two sailors have lost their lives because of the unsafe characteristics, easy pitchpole tendency, of the H16 design. It is the same for everyone sailing a H16 so, what the heck." Bill, I suggest you write to some US sailing magazines & ask them if they`ll publish that for you, then wait for Hobie`s lawyers to start calling you. It must have been a HUGE pitchpole, if that was the official cause of death. Personally I`d rather be caught out on a H16 in a storm than a 17ft boat with more sail area than it can cope with.

Yes, there are more than one way to make a cat fast - one method is to improve on construction methods to make the boat stronger & lighter, and put on a reasonable sailplan that is manageable in up to 25knots of wind, probably the upper design limit for most beach cats (oh, except for the SC range of course). The other method is to use cheap construction methods, overbuild them to make sure they`re strong, don`t worry about the weight too much, you can always load up the sail area & widen the boat to compensate.
Just don`t ask me for help dragging it up the beach.

I still can`t figure out how some people believe that a 17ft boat with more sail area than a F18 can be regarded as a beginner`s boat. I`m really impressed with the idea that someone actually built the thing, it seems horribly overpowered to me. The only SC boat I`ve seen is a Supercat 20, took the guys 2 days to rig it, was heavy as a speedboat, and once capsized it had a complicated stay-lengthening device to help right it.It took so long to manipulate that they went turtle, and needed a rescue boat`s assistance. It never beat a Tornado over the line at our club, old Tornado with old rig, one trapeze and heavy by today`s standards. Perhaps the owners never read the manual.
I also understand that the "new" 17ft design is not a re-hash of the old SC17 hull shape, but is in fact a new design, which is what lead me to ask why design something new which doesn`t fit into any of the formula classes - If this was done it would go a long way to getting more growth in the formula classes in the US, which would benefit everyone. I`m absolutely amazed that anyone would buy a NEW boat that doesn`t offer the ability of inclusion in one of the Formula classes. I know that the Formula classes are not huge in the US, but then if the US designers are purposefully avoiding them it`s no wonder.
I believe that Wouter has made the only sensible comments on the original question in this thread, and summed things up quite nicely with this :
The whole point comes down to the fact wether the ARC products are fast because of efficiency or because of the huge rigs they feature. The problem here is that without having a really comparable design using the "normal setup", it's hard (if not impossible?) to tell wether any speed increase is the result of superior efficiency or just the result of having a bigger engine.

I`ts good that Bill designs boats that are different, challenge the "norm" and don`t conform to formula rules. As he says, they aren`t intended for racing, except against themselves. Sounds like his ideals are not so different from those he criticizes the most.

Cheers
Steve