In the few races we had a Stealth F16 1-up against a Taipan F16 1-up we found a similar behaviour. So I'm not to sure that the difference in weight is the cause. It may well be some other aspect that is causing this.

Personally in several instances I found that a particular I-17 pointed higher than me in several club races. (still won the contest by unmistakable margins though). He had a specialized singlehander sail while I was using my doublehanding mainsail while sailing solo (tuning it flat with downhaul). I had better VMG but I had to sail noticeably lower than him to achieve it. In the discussions afterwards with some other sailors it was suggested that the different cuts of our mainsails (singlehanded use or doublehanded use) could well be the cause of this. I haven't done enough direct comparisons to tell.

To make things worse. In the direct comparison with a FX-one I outpointed him. Sailor skills can so much skew these results, it is hard to make any firm conclusion. This FX/stealth event is one of the better experiments because so many boats raced. Actually I've run an analysis on it and the results are quite dynamic. The spread between FX-one and Stealth F16's is pretty nominal, meaning that there doesn't seem to be any basis to conclude that there is real bias either way. To some extend this is logical of course the handicaps of both boats aren't that far apart and these are therefor quickly overcome by differences in skills or by luck.


Wouter