Jr.

Indeed, I don't think that being underweight relative to the class boat minimum is attractive. I hate slugging a corrector weight around and I don't believe that being a few kg overweight hurts that much. I think that being on class weight or less then 3 kg above it is what you want. 5 kg over is still acceptable, but is stretching it a bit. More than 7 kg overweight is not acceptable in a new boat.



Ohh, definately. I would easily trade-off weight for some extra stiffness. Just not too much weight.




Well, racing is racing wether you do it in a F1 car or your kids tricycles. However I think 180 kg's is much more than an F18 needs to be a strong and dependable boat. I don't think you can drop by say 50 kg's but somewhere between 150 and 160 kg would have been a very good choice for the F18 class. Still easy enough to build down to that weight without more advanced techniques. And those 20 to 30 kg will still make a noticeable difference when handling that boat on land and the water.





I don't agree with that. It has always been a problem of economics over a problem in technology. Several classes that are older then the F18 saw much lighter boats that held up very well. F18 was started in 1993 or so ? By that time technology was already pretty wide spread to build good 18 foot boats at 150-160 kg. Several boats of the 80's like the Prindle 18 and Dart 18 were build at 162 kg and 140 kg back then. Both were pretty succesful classes internationally.





Well, despite my "pain in the neck" status I can garantee everybody that I'm in full agreement with that.




Ohh definately although my hollidag time is coming to an end, so I won;t be able to hang around this forum to the same extend as I have been doing lately.

Greetings

Wouter

Jr