500th thread and 3025 posting A milestone !
Since the start of this forum in juli 2001 we gethered 500 threads of topics and a grant total of 3025 postings.
Everybody knows my love for numbers so here goes !
173 weeks of F16 forum results in an average of 2.89 new threads PER WEEK and 17.49 posts on average PER WEEK
or 1211 days of F16 forum activity resulting in an average of 2.50 posting per day !
That is quite an achievement in my my opinion. Especially considering that we really have been keeping up a rather constant level of this posting for almost 3 and a halve years now. It is not that we had times of many postings and then times of not a single one. In my experience we all have been able to keep it going and going; with only quiet times only having limited inpact. OF course it helps that we have sailors and activities in both the southern and northern hemisphere to keep new news coming in all the time.
Another interesting average is the average numbers of posts per thread. (3025-500)/500)= 5.05 replies for each initiating post (thread starter). This indicates that a lively discussion is taking place in nearly every thread. THis is stuff that makes sailors come back to this forum. Simply because things happen and you get replies to your messages.
As we all know we are by many measures a small community. Our numbers don't (yet?) approach those of F18. F20 or A-cat class numbers however some 100 boats are directly linked to the F16 class. Distribution is about : US 26, EU 40, Asia 23, Australia 10 and I didn't include the South African Mossies (There are OD now; some 20 of them) or the Aus and German Taipan (as they don't want us to include them even though several of them are sailing with a spinnaker) nor did I included the Swell Spitfires as again they are a seperate OD class. Of course this doesn't mean we respect these sailors any less and we will keep welcoming to our class format.
Some good 35 boats are Stealths, some 10 are one-offs and prototypes, and 55 are Taipan 4.9's with spinnakers. Both the Blade F16 and Taipan F16 designs are yet to young to be counted as a seperate class and these are included in the one-offs. However this may soon be over. I think both designs will pass the 5 confirmed boats threshold this winter. But this breakdown of the community shows that we have succesful in making our formula class a REAL formula class. Especially since with the introduction of the Taipan F16 we, as the F16 class, are about to reach the threshold of 3 commercially and generally available fully optimized F16 designs. Personally I think this a minimum for any selfrespecting formula class. I also makes the class alot more stabil and seriously cements its growth.
Growing a class is never easy and honestly the work never really stops but I think that we can say that we have proven that our initial idea has a lot of life and we have proven to be able to survive the most difficult part of getting started and survive the first 3 years. And of course in this respect a catamaran class is no different from a starting a company. The first 3 years is "make or break" territory. People on the fence waited it out to see where we would end up. To see wether our class rules proof to be stabil and wether our claims of F16 / F18 equality are really true. I notice over here in my own area that the scepsis has been replaced by a believe in what we say and more importantly what we do. A very good development. A few A-catters also see us for what we are, a darn good compromise between several conflicting wishes. The F18's know about us and respect the setup. There is no crew that makes fun of "those little boats" knowing full well that they'll be eating those words if they are not carefull. And we ourselfs have learned to get our heads out of the boats and mix it with the very skilled crews of both classes. Beating Hobie 16's on the line while sailing a F16 is easy enough. Doing the same with F18's and A-cats is a whole lot more challenging. This is the scene where we belong and only positive things can come of it.
I'm personally looking forward for this winter time. I have good hope that some more good news is coming our way, small steps but very much steps ahead. This way grow and grow and grow continiously. With this it is only a matter of time before we start rivalling the named classes in numbers as well.
Lets keep it up !
Regards,
Wouter
