A quick reply, please forgive me.



Welcome to the club !




He should add the US build Blade F16. That one will be the best of all 4 listed. US build with garantee and very attractive pricewise.





Were does he sail ? The first area to go class will be Florida and the area around it. In march we'll have the second Gulfport invitation F16 regatta (singlehanding) together with the A-cats.

I know I-17R has a class in the great like area.





Good choice, all who have tried it will never to back to sailing without a spi. We have a few F16 sailors in the (international) class that were very against the spi when singlehanding and now they are all doing the spi thing when singlehanding and will never go back. Downwind sailing without a spi is quickly becomming a thing of the past.





I'm sorry to say but USPN is all over the place with these boats. If we look at the Australian yardsticks (same system as the US version) than we see a standard sloop Taipan (no spi) being rated faster in relation to a F18 than USPN rates an F16 (WITH spi !) to the US F18. And both the Taipan and F18's are actively raced in Aus. In Europe we race F16 (in both doublehanded and singlehanded modes) of a rating EQUAL to the F18's and have a few race wins with this handicap. So basically The F16's should be rated quite close to the F18's; that means much faster than USPN rates them now.

Simply put we have peachy handicap just like the Supercats.

From my own experience and the direct comparison between the boats at the DCC event in 2004 and the races in Asia the listing appears to be (from fast to slow) : F16 and I-17R about the same, then FX-one (with spi) and Taipan 4.9 (No spi) on shared 3rd spot; I17 (EU version with spi).

I personally believe the F16's to be faster than the others in basis because it is a more refined design that holds its control over the full wind spectrum better. However that 30 ft 170 s.ft mainsail of the I-17R is some big rig. Surely in 0-5 knots this is going to help the I-17R.

The FX-one is noticeably slower than both the F16 and I-17R



Ohh very much so I think that 70 % of the F16 class regulary sails or races singlehanded. As good as all F16 sailors sails and races doublehanded at least several times a year. We are very mixed. The sailors do switch sailing modes quite often and also combine two single handed crews into a double hander crew for some distance races or regatta's like the Alter cup qualifiers.

Also gary maskiel in AUS just took line honours in a distance race while sailing singlehanded and in March we are working to have the second combined A-cat/F16 Gulfport championship. This event is only for singlehanded F16's. So we do try to have events for both sailing modes.




They Australian nationals always have both fleets and always had these.

The US Taipan 4.9 nationals did have only two-up boats but I don't think we will see many Taipan 4.9 nationals in the future. With the introduction and order list for the Blade F16 the growth is rather in the F16 framework. Here we make a point of having both setups and we mix both modes on the water. For some reason the two setups are rather close in overall performance.




The Taipan F16 is a modified Taipan 4.9 so that is fully optimized under the F16 rules. It uses a few Taipan 4.9 components but most of these have been modified. Beams are longer to make the boat wider. The mainsail has a different cut and a larger square top. the jib is selftacking, the rearbeam is a larger 80x2 mm round T7 section increasing stiffness and the mainbeam is put higher on the hull getting more clearence of the water, thus making the boat handle chop better. And Of course standard a spinnaker with snuffer.





My advice would be to arrange a test ride on all boats and then decide. Be sure to get a test ride on the Blade F16, that one is something else.


I hope this helps and I'm open to any further questions ( wouterhijink(at)hotmail.com )

Wouter