Ohh yes, prior spinnaker experience does help.

With respect to the mast it may be more different. The section is kind of flexible in the sideways plane. Alot more then the more conventional teardrop shaped masts as used on Hobies and Nacra. The flexing of the top to the sides is intentional it depowers the boat, opening up the top, and resulting in higher speeds. For this reason you will often sail with less mast rotation then on other boats. To give an example : doublehanding in a breeze the rotator arm is pointing to the ends of the rearbeam or even the rudderstocks. This is less then 30 degrees.

With this rig, nearly always, "Flat is Fast". Flat here means little rotation and little draft. But you'll get the hang of that soon enough.

One thing that helped me alot in the beginning was the realisation that this boat must be optimized for low drag rather then for power. Often when you feel properly powered up but relatively slow then it helps to depower the rig and open up the top. Quite a few times one of the crew is coming off the wire as a direct result but the boat can be sailing anything from 10% to 30% faster just the same. This is a rig that you must allow to breath freely, concentrate on that. Don't try to bend its power to your will but learn to set it free and have it stream. The rig really likes the latter and can really get crumpy when you force it too much.

The funny thing is the contradiction that you often need to apply much downhaul and sheet tension to set the rig loose and have it stream freely. In the beginning this is difficult to learn. Often sailors correlate loose and breathing rigs with low sheet and control line tensions that is not the case with the F16. A loose and free rig here means a flat rig (small draft) with a twisting top. In order to get this you need ample amounts of downhaul and sheet tensions. If you don't set enough downhaul then the mainsheet will feel heavy and the boat will feel bound up as the leech is not twisting. This is why both need to be adjusted more or less simultaniously.

Anyway, you can tell already that a few minutes actually doing this on the water is better than ten page of me describing it.

When you have actually experienced the speed grooves one time then it is alot easier to teach yourself to find them again. Often beginners will feel that they have the boat going pretty well (they don't know better) while they could be going 10% to 30% faster.


Wouter