Bill

My original rules were based on some modeling and a boat that I am building. The rules were not optimized for existing boats.

A scratch built 14, with no min boat weight, would enjoy a huge advantage. I proposed allowing boats under 240 lbs, a smaller max sail area, 120 ft2. This was apparently not accepted.

This pretty much kills me. I would be looking at ~100 lb of corrector weight on hulls designed for a 300-350 lb total boat and skipper. With 100 lb corrector, I suspect, the boat would be doggy and oscillate around the corrector mass in chop.

My boat was not designed for F14. It was designed as an updated tunnelhull, to give me a multihull to race against Portsmouth dinghies on the Wed Nights. It is 14ft long, 5 ft wide, using a Laser rig to get me on the water by mid April and then a carbon windsurfer/Moth/skiff derived rig by probably by June. Final rig will be 100 ft2 main with a ~100 roller furling downwind sail. Target weight 100-120 lbs. However, to preserve my options I added 1 in of hull height, more bow volume and designed the structure to handle an 8.5 ft beam and a larger rig. I am probably going to increase the beam to 7ft, mostly for my comfort.


I agree and disagree on boat weight however. First, I agree, for a production builder a 100-150lbm F14 would be really expensive $12,000-15,000 easy.If an aerospace firm built it, it would be $100K but it would only weigh ~80Lbm Second, I disagree, for a homebuilder it's not that simple. You could scale a Unicorn A-class and end up with 150 lbm F14. I am using strip planked cedar with Kevlar inside and glass outside mostly because I could not get the hull shape I wanted with plywood. If I were really careful about extra material I could probably cut 20 lbs off the boat. A far as cost, I should call this the ebay boat. Most of the expensive parts were purchased on ebay, over a period of years, really cheap or they are leftovers from old projects. You can't do that on a production line. Up to a point, a homebuilder has an advantage. However as soon as the designs stabilize and there is a big enough market the production builder will eat them alive.

Carl