Dirk,
Look into your catsailor PM inbox.
There is a link to a website that you possible can access containing the class rules.
If that doesn't work then I'll send you a file by e-mail.
p.s. any solution to give the growing China fleet access to the F16 site?
We are building up a new website, although sadly enough it is going really slow because we need more hands to get all the work done. Both Robi and I are too limited in time to do everything quickly. So please fellow F16 sailors help us out.
that is great news for allowing canted hulls
(although homebuilders would have it much easier if they would be allowed to glue them instead of screwing them.
But you know the reason for that decision. It was either reduce our overall width to 2.30 mtr or disallow glueing of the beams. We chose to keep the F16 performance up. Something I know you appreciate because otherwise you couldn't have imported those secondhand boats to Shanghai ! The standard Taipan 4.9 is also to wide to fit into a container with the beams glued permanently into place.
Risking repeating myself, I would like to add that the F16 class rules are alot more performance oriented then many sailors understand them to be. They certainly allow more freedom then the F18's/F20's and in many respects the F16's come quite close to the freedom of the A-cats. In some cases we allow more freedom than the A-cats, example of the last are the canted daggerboards.
So often if you think that something is not allowed, then you'll find out that it actually is.
I just heard from an australian taipan sailor that the bolts on the standard taipans rear beam shear off quite often and the front beam quite often also get cracks... so maybe something to reconsider/discuss 2008).
This is known to us for a long time. Personally, I still have 8 mm bolts at the rear and they are holding. When I see stuff happening there I'll just drill out the holes and put 10 mm bolts in. That should solve the problem.
The mainbeams cracks may occure sometimes and I'm keeping a close eye on that but the Taipans I've seen personally didn't develop these cracks yet. We have been pressuring AHPC to upgrade the Taipan design in various aspects and the beams are one such thing. You will note that the builder in Asia of the Blade F16 and the Taipan F16 is using round beams both at the rear and front. This something that AHPC should consider as well. Certainly homebuilder should do that.
Actually Harry, a homebuilder near to me in the Netherlands, is using a section of a broken Nacra F18 mast that I could lay my hands on. This modification should by a sufficient answer to the possibility of developping any cracks. It also should add extra stiffness to the whole boat. Homebuilders should consider this option.
With regard to reconsider/discuss in 2008, this is design issue and not a class rules issue. Class rules allow such mods already and have always allowed it in the past. And in case of the Asian builder, he is already adressing these points. Blade and other design were already beefed up. It is now more a legacy issue of the standard Taipan 4.9's than of new F16's.
by the way, the first Taipan F18 who dominated the Round Texel at his first introduction was significantly canted.
I know, the nacra Inter-18 is also canted, it successor the nacra F18 isn't. But none of the new F18's are. Tiger never was and that design is still going strong. Cirrus never canted their boats and all in all it seems to not make a noticeably difference in the performance of the F18's.
In the F16 class we'll just leave it to the builders to decide wether they will cant or not.
The problems with the heavy F18 however is that they spend a lot of time with both hulls in the water
Not anymore. F18's with their new large squaretop sails lift their hulls rather soon especially when the crew sits lower on the tramp to clear the luff hull.
I personally think some other physical thing is prevent canting from being noticeable on these doublehanders. Possibly the enertia of the 2 persons and the boat, which is relatively much higher than the A-cat + 75 kg crew combo, is making the canting effect all but neglectable. Something is happening that just kills it.
Sill I believe that the Aicher+Egner F18 is canted but I am not sure about the Capricorn?
Capricorn is not canted. Aicher+Egner will probably try canting because of the A-cat experience and will in a few years abandon the idea as it will make their boat more expensive than can be justified by a (non-measureable) performance increase.
Having sailed uncanted and canted hulls I believe as soon as you lift a hull the canted hull is just so much more fun to sail, specially with the flat planning hull shapes of nowadays designs.
So describe to us what happens when you cant a hull ? What was the difference that you felt. Personally I've sailed a canted F18 a few times and a uncanted one and I couldn't really notice any difference.
what is actually happening with the bimare f16 whose mast/sail is based on current A-class designs? Will this boat also be 'grandfathered' for a while?
It is not part of the core F16 class anymore because it is not compliant with the class rules. But it can continue to invoke the grandfather rule for a long time to come. But then again so to can boats like the FX-one.
In principal although I do not like so much the low cost approach of bimare it seems that this boat with a modern design might be one of the cheapiest and lightest ways to make it into the 16foot world... but with a to tall mast and no jib (so actually much less sailarea, but very reasonable decisions seen with the ventilo 20, the bim 20, marstroems m20 or the f18ht before) this boat of one very experienced mass production builder choosed definitely a different way than the current class rules are about...?
Simply put; a fully optimized F16 will nail the Bim 16 with an A-cat rig around the the bouys when double handed. And Bimare has agreed to that much in writing as well. Of course when singlehanding the situation is much more equal. I don't believe for a second that performance dictated the decision to not have a jib. Sure enough the mainsail is more efficient without the jib, but that is not the same as saying that a (smaller) F16 cat-rig is faster than a F16 sloop rig. Because it simply isn't. The jib has coped alot of bad press of the last few years because of misleading claims propelled by cat-rig fans, but as a matter of fact the jib makes the rig more powerful and faster, also upwind ! Why else would the Americas Cup boat still use a jib if it wasn't faster ?
The whole issue comes down to the criterium. For a GIVEN FIXED total sailarea limit then a Cat-rig setup may be faster around a course than a sloop rig (but not always !); for a given platform setup (thus allowing more sail area to be featured when adding a jib) then a sloop rig is faster around a course.
Of course one can ALWAYS put more sail area on a boat when using a main + jib than one can when using ONLY a mainsail.
And this is where a cat-rig will always fall on its face.
When we made the F16 class rules we focussed on the best performance we could get with relative simple means. Adding jib was just one of those "simple means". We were not biased towards mimicking the A-cat setup because of emotional considerations or because we wanted to share the use of components that were orginally designed for another boat/class. Boats like the FX-one suffer from the last as well and it just produces a less optimal boat then can be had.
It is my opinion that Bim made different decisions in this respect. And we, the F16 rule makers, can understand the grounds for those, but that doesn't mean that we agree with them.
Of course equality with the F18 boats was a big goal of ours and sharing the same rig setup is a very important aspect in this.
So we parted ways.
Still rumour cirquit has it that our ways could meet up again. And the F16 class rules will not be changed, so make your own projections for the future.
[quote]
for now on, who is building f16 cat rigged big square top mainsails to fit to the standard 4.9 taipan superwing mast?
- Ashby Sails (for sure) [color:"red"] Yes for sure [/color]
- Goodall (as seen with agent orange) [color:"red"] Naturally, upon request though, otherwise you get the standard 4.9 mainsail [/color]
- Landenberger One design? [color:"red"] I seem to remember that Landy made a few sails for the Swiss Taipans, not sure wether he has made a F16 main for the superwing mast section yet. He does for the Stealth F16's [/color]
- Ian Markovich (redhead sails australia) [color:"red"] He made my mainsail and those for the first American Blades [/color]
- Ullman sails USA (Jay Glaser) [color:"red"] The new US blades will be fitted with these. [/color]
This should be choice enough I think. 4 very well respected and international sailmakers
Wouter
