Jr (H20) and others like Catfan,

Yes, you are indeed getting a hard time from me, but it doesn't mean much overall. Rest assured that like all others I too think that an extra builder to the F18 is a good development. Personally, I'm thrilled to see Bimare take on the F18 challenge and design a boat that can be properly compared to teh products of other designers. Up till now, Bim has often claimed superiority in various aspects while always staying away from direct engaging the competitition. This combined with the "super secret" "Hush-Hush" sauce that is often employed by Bim makes for comical situations.

We saw it with the Jav-1 (successor to the Bim2000); here Bim claimed to have improved on the basic Aigner Flyer A-cat design. Well, .....

Second was the Bim One-design A-cat class. That went down the drain pretty fast as well.

Then we had the Jav-2 story, heralded as the future of cat design. Most crews are now back on the I-20 and F18's.

And I was then personally told, in 2003, that some 50 Jav-16's were on order and hitting the market in a few months time. And that these "design of future" uni-rigged Jav-16's would blow us (the F16's) out of the water. A few months later a request came in for awarding handicap points to jav-16 sailors as they could never fairly race with sloop rigged F16's. That was the last we heard of that design. Because of overwhelming inactiveness the Jav design finally fell from the F16 class.


Mind you the Bim XJ (or AJ) seems to be doing what is expected of it. Being competitive in A-cat events. So since 2000, 5 tries and 1 decent succes. That is the background on which I comment on the eternal "super secret but revolutionary" Bim projects.

But this time there is indeed no escaping for anybody. If Bim designs a winner then I'll be the first to "eat my hat in public", you can be sure of that. If Bim designs something else then we'll know about it as well.

But I stand by my comment that it is a long road towards a succesful F18 and these pictures suggest that Bim is only at the very beginning of it. Hell, even Nacra has misjudged the time required to come out with a new F18 and they already did 2 of them previously. This is no bad ju-ju towards Bim, it is actually a causionary note. It is murder in the F18 class now. Tigers are a shitload better than 5 years ago. Stiffer, faster, better sails, better foils. And both the Capricorn and Cirrus F18 raised the bar significantly.

It is a hard world out there, as the US F18 vs 18HT story also underlines.

If wish Bim the best with their new F18 design, I truly do. And if you allow I would also like to ask Bim to just present the details of their new project without the fuss. They are not fooling anybody and the forum posters here do know alot about boat design already.

And Indeed We would have a very enjoyable evening together over a beer. I can talk boats until I drop and love the sportr in all and every aspect.

Best of luck,

Wouter