Cary,

It takes some courage to be early in a new class for sure. The F16 class though, has some great things going for it that the I20 type classes do not. The I20 and other big boat classes P19-MX etc. are made to race with 2 men who know what they are doing. In my opinion, this has been one of the contributing factors to the decline in sailing. Everyone wants to progress, but this has been to the exclusion of women and the wife girl friend teams. Not too many women are keen on going to watch, or be OK with the guy for going every weekend to race without them. Less women at a regatta?? you might as well take away the beer too.

The F16 class, now provides performance sailing in a package for nearly everyone. (Please do not get me wrong, 2-250lb guys going downwind in a big blow will miss the 4 extra feet, but it's performance belies the fact that it is only 5m long). The boat is nearly 100 lb lighter than the F18 class with higher power/weight ratio. It is "high tech" so that it can be tuned for a wide range of crew weights and conditions. In general comparison the F16 class is very comparable in performance dirrectly with the F18 class. If the guys in your area wont let you play with them in most if not all of the local regattas, you have other problems anyway.

When my wife and I moved to FL we moved from a Hobie only area. Here we were now racing protsmouth, with 1-3 of every boat ever made. With out the competitive 1design racing to keep it interesting we were forced to watch the guys on the higher tech boats having fun going downwind with spins, while we layed on our backs being the human boom vang. So, we decided to upgrade, and I began the search for the right boat for us. I looked very hard at the F18 class, but dragging that much boat around the beach combined with the fact that the min class weight is 308 made that a very unattractive option for us. The F16 class seemed to have the potential for performance and answeres for the detriments I found in some of the other classes. The fact that my wife, a diehard H16 crew, liked this boat says a lot. If you can get the oportunity to sail a Taipan, or we can meet up soon to let you run the Blade, please do it. You will be amazed at how well these platforms sail.

We are building the first run of production boats now, and will be fully up within the next 2 months. Give me a call or e-mail, and I can go over and maybe answer some more of your questions.

Matt