I used to own the Nacra 18 Square, but never used a tilt trailer. The picture you see above is Dick Lemke’s boat and is for sale through The Cat House in Michigan. It has been modified from stock to allow trailering without having to re-lace the trampoline each time it is disassembled/reassembled, and made the trailering/setup process easier. In the stock boat, there were two fore-and-aft tubes that went from front to rear beam. These are used to prevent the beams from rotating. On the boat in the picture, these fore-and-aft tubes and their fittings were moved outboard to along side the hulls. The trampoline was modified by moving the sleeves for these tubes outboard. Now the boat is put back together and the trampoline is laced and tightened. From this point onward, the trampoline assembly, including both beams and both tubes, could be removed in tact. Now the boat can be easily put onto a trailer that is no wider than about 7’ wide, the distance from the front to back beam. To do this, the trampoline is turned 90 degrees when trailering. We avoided the tilt trailer because one of the Michigan fleet used the tilt trailer and it got blown over while trailering, destroying the boat.



Mine was a 1982. I don’t remember when Nacra stopped offering it.



It is designed for single-handing and competed as a Category II 18 Square when I was racing mine.



The hulls were slightly modified with the introduction of the N5.5 Sloop and Uni. The 18 Square had a visible seam along the bottom and the beam spacing was a little different. When the 8-1/2’ wide Sloop and Uni came out the seam disappeared (cleaned up, which I did to my boat when I repainted it) and the spacing of the beams was different.



Since you were at the back of the tramp when tacking, the crawl was not difficult.



The only concerns I would have if adding the spi-genny is that the sail needs to come around the forestays, making for a very long pole, and that the rudders seem to have significant weather helm, even at the extreme adjustments allowed by the stock system. With a single-handed spinnaker boat, you need to let go of the helm while raising or lowering the spinnaker. The rudder system on the newer Nacras deals with this extremely well, but the old system does not without significant modification. On the plus side, I have seen the modern rudder system adapted to the late-model N5.5 Uni.



I did not have that much trouble righting mine, but I weighed about 210 lbs. Dick weighed a lot less than I did.



These are double surfaced sails, like the Stars and Stripes catamaran that defended America’s Cup in 1988. The most famous of the 18 Squares, “Wild Turkey” had the wing, but it was a pain because it was taken down and put into a trailer each time it came to the beach. It took about four of us to do it each evening at the North American Championships in Traverse City in 1987. That was the only Championship “Wild Turkey” competed in that it didn’t win, losing to Jon Lindahl on “LCD”. It was a very close and exciting battle between the two boats/skippers.