Hi All

I owned a NACRA 16 squared for three years and can advise as follows:

The boat was designed by NACRA Australia in the late 1980's and is essentially a 5.2 hull shortened marginally. Despite being called a 16 it is actually over 17 feet long (to match the actual length of the Hobie 16 which is also over 17 feet)

In its original form it weighed 130kgs but like most Australian NACRA's the newer boats have come down in weight (the 5.8 has come down from 183kg to 165kg in the same time period)

The mast is a 28 foot aluminium teardrop section (same as 5.2 and very strong) and the sail areas is 16m square. Beam is 2.5m.

As far as performance goes it was an absolute dream upwind - very nicely balanced and in some respects nicer in a seaway than my subsequent T4.9 or current Flyer A Class. Memory can play tricks but I still think it would be competitive with both these boats upwind.

Downwind - well unfortunately that was another story - basically very hard to get going fast downwind and would have really benefitted from a radial traveller due to the boomless rig geometry. The sail was very good for its day but the pin-head sail plan doesn't do anything to help downwind performance. In races the T4.9's would go past pretty quickly downwind (hence the yardsticks)

It is a prime candidate for a kite being very bouyant for one person and very stable and several were fitted with the IO type snuffer and a 17m2 kite a couple of years ago - there was some mention that this setup would be made the class standard but I don't think it has eventuated yet. The main challemge is that they are constructed as single handed boats with dual forestays and I'm not sure how they would cope structually with a low bridle and single forestay to fit a current kite set-up (although all that weight has to be doing something!)

The boats are still built and have their own division at NACRA Nationals over here.

Whilst not qulifying as a F16 I have often given some thought to grabbing an older one and racing it with a kite as a boat which would be very competitive for price and a pure pleasure on all points of sail.

Cheers

James