I've been working my butt off behind the scene with F16 and NMBR stuff so yes I'm really slacking on the F16 webpage. Luckily I got some help from an asia F16 sailor so hopefully the F16 website will be more informative during the 2005 season.



I will give you cold hard facts.

Taipan 4.9 + spi = very good for light crews and solo sailors, boat likes weights out of range 115 kg-140 kg best (when doublehanding) but will take 105 kg - 155 kg without much fuss. It may take waves on the main beam at 145-155 kg when sailing in chop. 135 kg seems like the centre weight and the perfect weight for all conditions, but performance stays largely the same when being 10 kg off this number. Solo sailing there is no optimum just the right combo of mainsail cut and weight of skipper. Advice for when your solo weight and double handed weigths are very far apart is that you get a special cut sail for either use.

Taipan F16 = very much the same as the Taipan 4.9 + spi but raising the mainbeam by an inch really made a difference in severe chop. I sailed this boat at 155 -160 kg several times in heavy chop and short stubby waves and I didn't take more than 1 or two waves on the beam in about a hours worth of sailing which I think is quite good. With 155-160 kg on board the Taipan F16 can be sailed nose down again without fear of hitting the waves and that helps getting the sterns out and speed up. Several sailors won't like it but I truly believe the F16 upgrades on the basic Taipan 4.9 gave it a new lease on life AND the basic 4.9 was already a good design so you can extrapolate where the F16 version ends up. having said all this I think 150 kg is the top weight range for optimal sailing, meaning being competitive with this hull design. Any more and you'll depress the hulls to much and slow down as a result. You are probably best sailing this F16 version at 150 kg or less. Perfect would be around 140 kg.

Stealth F16 ; Due to the much flatter keel line (almost U shaped with flat bottom) and more bouyancy low in the hulls the Stealth F16 will take crews going up in doublehanded weight well. Think up to 160 kg when sailing at near optimal speed. It will hold crews up to 180 kg in certified way and seems to sit well in the water at those weights. Of course at weights near 180 kg's you are at a disadvantage speedwise but less so than you might suspect. Some Stealth F16 sailors commented on how the boat feels like it planes on the downwind legs under spi. The keel line does seem to allow that. It really seems flat and wide enough for that. Quite a few singlehanders do sail this design but the advice with this boat is that you really should get a solo cut mainsail for it when racing it solo. The Stealth Mast section seems to really prefer that, more so than the Taipan mast section. Thing is that the Stealth F16 has a quite powerful LandenBerger rig and that seems to fit doublehanded sailing with that hull design very well (it is certainly no slower than the Taipan in that mode, from what we've seen at DCC) but the cut seems to be to powerful for comfortable solo sailing and requires a lot of downhaul to make it work. Getting an (second) optimized solo mainsail seems to do the trick.


Blade F16 ; This boat has a rounder keel line than the Stealth F16 and probably contains an amount of bouyancy low in the hull that is between the Taipan and Stealth designs. It was really optimized for the doublehanded crew weight range between 110 kg and 160 kg; which is arguably a very wide optimal crew weight range. Also as Phill Brander is a near exclusive solo sailor himself he really worked hard at making the design go well when singlehanded. For some reason he has succeeded very well at both modes. Pretty much the reason for it is the Superwing mast section and the Taipan sail design that is at the foundation of the Blade rig, this setup allows the rig to be depowered to a very large range and so a doublehander sail can quite easily be trimmed for good solo sailing. The second reason is the hull design. It sits high in the water and the wetted surface area seems to be minimal. I should rather say that the difference in wetted surface area between very different crew weights seems to be really small and so sailors comment on how it feels very much the same with 160 kg on as it does with 80 kg on it. One time it was test sailed wby Phill and Tony at about 180 kg combined in conditions very similar to Tradewinds and even Phill himself was very surprised to find that the design took this extreme crew weight in its stride. I remind you of how Phill typically sails solo at about 90 kg's. He came back noting how amazed he was himself that no waves were ever taken on the mainbeam and how the boat maintained its smooth and slippery feel through the water. It felt nimble just the same and very agile; very much like when it was sailed solo. Now we really do not know how it maintains speed when going from 75 kg solo to 180 kg doublehanded. It certainly is reported that it feel as sailing at about the same speeds but we have no really dependent and scientifically acquired data. However, when a boat feels fast it probably is fast as well. As the optimal doublehanded weight range I would say 115 kg (due to the rig) to 160 kg (a conservative estimate). I dare not name its perfect crewweight number (for either mode).

In general I think the best crew weights for the F16 class are in the range of 125 kg - 155 kg when doublehanding with the centre at 140 kg. For solo sailing it is all about the mast-sail combo and weight doesn't seem to be a significant part of the equation. The newer designs will take weights outside the optimal crewweight range well enough to stay in the game in a serious way with a little extra skill and an adjusted cut of the sails. Solo sailing it is all about skill and a sail cut for your weight and style of sailing. Several people will roll their eyes at such a large optimal crew weight range (125 kg - 155 kg) However this is all the result of having the spinnaker. This seems to take away a big portion of the advantage that lighter crews always had on the downwind legs. Upwind the differences between different crew weigths was always less than on the downwinds. Adding the spinnaker acted as a great equalizer. Add to this the modern hull shape with lots of volume at the keel line where light crews are sailing with a wetted area only slighly less than heavier crews and you'll end up with a optimal crew weight range that is rather large. F18 class shows the same trend. And from the A-cat class it is clear how much the right combo or crew and sail cut can equalize things. Glenn Ashby is sailing at 85 kg and is rather short, but he wins in light winds just the same as heavy winds. One last comment I truly believe that small optimal weight ranges are a feature of strickt OD classes where one particular sail cut must be used by all crews and where hull design is still largely featuring V-ed keellines. This will always favour a narrow weight range over all others.

Of course you have to have a good sailmaker cut you a sail to your weight. But all F16 builders offer that at no extra cost. AHPC has Goodall yacht sails, Stealth features Landenberger and Blade uses Redhead (well known in Taipan class) or Ashby sails. These are all big names in the business.




Really I can only give you one reply to that question. Test sail an F16 and see for yourself. I have yet to meet a person that test sailed the Taipan and that didn't come off impressed. By far the most of them buy an F16 sooner or later. The rig is just so much ahead of the old tear drop shaped mast rigs. Talk to Matt McDonald about it; his first experience is still fresh. Ask him how much he felt in control all the way to the worst Tradewinds had to offer and beyond. If you ask me I will tell you exactly the same thing. I raced my F16 in two distance race in 2005 in heavy seas and heavy winds (160 kg combined, 20-25 knots winds). I swear to God and on the health of my Mother that I have never sailed a boat that was so well mannered and controllable than the Taipan F16 with the wingmast rig + Redhead sail. I have sailed nearly all cat designs that have sold more than 10 boats except A-cats, Marstrom products and Stealth/Blade F16. If I have a choice I would rather be on the shorted hulled F16 in nuclear winds than on any modern F18 or 20 footer. During the distance racing we never came close to wiping out. We had one reach that lasted 20 minutes and that was as fast as a dash out of hell. The boat didn't have any time to rise on to the waves as it approached on them so quickly. It just crashed through halve of them and we felt in full control all the way. Critics wondering if the alu mast pushed the bows down ? NO WAY, just didn't happen. And when we started feeling out of control we just decreased mast rotation and the boat immediately relaxed down. It was far more a question of how far WE were willing to push the edge than a question of how far the boat allowed us to do so. If we wanted to, and we did one time amidst a fleet of converging boats, we could completely depower the rig to puppy level by derotating the mast. We had to come in from the trapeze to keep the luff hull kissing the water (in 20-25 knots of winds while going up upwind with the sails sheeted in and travellers centred). If we had let out the main traveller only 4-6 inches I'm sure we would have been with both hulls well in the water. You can complete tone down the boat by these controls without throwing the head into wind. Best part however is when you power up again. Like somebody throws over a switch. You let the mast rotation out just a little and you immediately accellerate away; at least in those 20-25 winds we did.

I would like to know more about your intented way of sailing any new boat but if I assume right that you are looking to solo often and looking to take somebody along relatively frequently as well (all with spi) than I truly think that you have only one serious option. Other designs/classes will allow a similar use but not to the same extend, to the same performance and feel that the F16's can provide. Don't let yourself be fooled to think that a carbon teardrop shape mast is better than an aluminium wing mast; you'll be proven wrong. The gains are the result of the wingmast shape much more than of the any use of carbon fibre.

After sailing my own F16 I'm more convinced than I ever was before.

My appologies for the lengthy reply, I hope I did answer all your questions.


Wouter