I weight 182 lbs myself and I'm able to right the Taipan F16 solo in all conditions. However I think the tipping point for light winds righting of the Taipan 4.9/F16 is to be found around 155 lbs. Wearing a full wetsuit and gear will help over wearing just a T-shirt/trapeze and bouyancy aid.

I will give two answers in this post.

First, I think Matt and Craig gave the best solutions. Simply because the difference between being able to right the Taipan and not being to right the Taipan seems like only a couple of kg's (lbs). Only a few liters of seawater hung of your shoulders will tip the scales. The daggerboard should be able to take the load of a man standing on them but it is also easy to damage the fine trailing edge or hurt yourself when you slide off.

In the way of rigting bags you have many options. One of the simpler ones is just a medium size army bag. You know the kind that is just a big cylinder with a string on one end to close it. Fill the bag and hook the string after closing the bag from your trapeze hook while running the string and bag off your shoulder.


My second answer is on the topic of tip weight :

The Taipan mast has a tip weight of about 7.5 kg's. The 6.0 kg's tip weight as named in the class rules is the revised weight and this will allow 1.5 kg * 8.5 mtr / 1.1 = 11 kg lighter skippers to right such a mast in comparison to a Taipan superwing mast. Pretty much a 6 kg tipweight mast should allow any 65 kg (140 lbs) skipper to right the boat. This mast must then be made of carbon, you can't get that low with aluminium.

So you could get a carbon mast with minimal F16 tipweight and be done. The Stealth F16's actually do have these and thus can be righted by significantly lighter crews/skippers.

But gettting a carbon mast is pricy as you also will need a new mainsail to go with that.



I guess your best option is a righting bag, cheapest and you are not far away from the minimum weight required to right the boat.

Wouter