Cary,

I have raced the Taipan, and loved the boat. Those events were what convinced me to explore the F16 class further. To answer you r question on the differences:

The main difference in boats (Taipan and Blade) are in the hull shape. (The new Taipans are offered in a true F16 configuration) Phill Brander spent considerable time in creating a hull shape that perfomed as well as the benchmark Taipan, but had had some more 'user friendly" attributes. The hull section is deeper providing more clearance from the surface especially handy in big chop. The hull shape moves the volume down very low. This makes the hull perform more similar to the wave piercing designs run succesfully by Flyer and some others, but more importantly, makes this hull shape much less sensitive to crew weight than a more traditional bottom shaped design. The 16 foot designs typically have disproportionately large transomes in order to fit the required hull volume in to a 5m platform. The feature I noticed most in comparing how the 2 boats sailed, is that the rocker / hull shape combination in the Blade made it much easier to run with clean separation of the water off the transom, and it seemed to be much less prone to pitching when powering up through the chop.

We have a lot more tuning to go to really find where this platform works best in what conditions, and hopefully a lot more head to head opotunities to test against the other F16 designs. But for my wife and myself, we are extreamly please with our first experiences on the Blade.

Matt