Heard there was some 18 Square discussion and questions here. I was class secretary from 1983 to about 1994 or 1995 when the class went inactive. How can I help with answers to questions?

Let's start here:
1. My boat, a pretty much stock NACRA production boat had tramp modified to allow it to be trailered completely lace up - which cut nearly 20 minutes from setup time.
2. The boat was a Category II which had minimum weight at 345 lbs. Jon Lindahl's boats were for the most part - Category I boats, and lightest that I saw weighed at a North Americans event was about 260 lbs. - construction at the time was veneer ply over plastic honeycomb core. Masts were aluminum (often Tornado masts that had been cut and tapered. Rudders and boards were honeycomb/carbon and ultra light compared to the solid glass boards from the factory.
3. Most factory boats had the boom mounted on the lower rear of the front cross beam, just above the tramp. Combined with boom end sheeting, and the mainsheet also acted as a vang.
4. Terrific pointing boat upwind, and could always use more sail area downwind. Very s-m-o-o-t-h ride in waves and chop, but the boat could bite you in power reaches.
5. I had a lever attached to bottom of front cross beam that trailed back under tramp. In case of capsize (only once) the lever combined with the mast full of packing foam "peanuts' came back up without problem.
6. Hulls were very buoyant - but not as fat/full as the Coyote. Also much less rocker than the Coyote which made tacking it a "pay attention" manouver.
7. Chris Cordes from Florida ran a chute on his 18 Square for one (or more) of the Mug Races. As I recall, he indicated no problems, but felt the mast walls were a bit thin to do it every day.
8. Hulls started out as Unicorn/Sol Cat in mid/late 1970's. Then NACRA (Roland brothers) moved to the NACRA 5.2 hulls at 10 feet beam. Finally they built the Square to new hull sizes with more buoyancy 11 foot beam, and introduced them around 1980-1981. These remained the standard (glass only - no mat, no core material) until approximately the late 1980's or early 1990's when the hull shape emulated the NACRA 5.5 Uni, and foam cores became the normal build. Dacron sails were changed to Mylar/Kevlar - although Randy Smyth, Skip Elliott, Henry Bossett, and Brad Johannson began introducing Mylar sails, and then moved to Mylar/Kevlar.
9. Gino Morrelli, Brad Johannson, Fred Kilbourn, and John Lindahl were the leaders in boat building and design. A few other west coast builders also took part, but their number of boats remained fairly small - usually only one or two boats. Kim Higgs of Saginaw Michigan and Jon Lindahl were two who showed up in the mid 1980's with reversed bows - common today in the "A" Class - but were a new idea back then.
10. As Les notes - the solid wing built by Hubbard, Brad Johannson and Craig Riley came onto the scene and easily became the "class symbol". After a couple of years of heavy effort, Lindahl finally was able to win a North Americans with his soft-sail boat (sail by Henry Bossett) over the solid wing of Craig's boat. Wild Turkey was a test bed for the C Class during those years. It had a double element flap - and by modern C Class wing standards was a dinosaur. Dave Ward, another Michigan sailor also experimented with a wing mast sail (huge mast) but he never managed to get it dialed in. Also, the class went up to 13 foot beams, but the stress and bending of the cross tubes made trim and tuning hard to do. Most boats dropped back tot he 11-12 foot beams.

There are a lot of reasons why the class died - mostly because NACRA (then Performance Catamarans) elected to end the build and furnish of the wide cross tubes. Supercat with their 12 foot wide, 20 foot long boats were showing up with mega sail area, and with NACRA factory not building or taking special orders, there were fewer and fewer home builders. Also - folks like Denis Palin were sailing the old NACRA Squares but couldn't get parts - and obviously new boats no longer provided older used boats. (By the way - Denis won the 1983 North Americans Category II sailing the heaviest boat there - at 400 lbs. I recall he did in a few of the lighter Category I boats that year - so he IS a wonderful sailor!

Hopefully this will answer questions - but if not, you can email me or post here. I will try to watch a bit closer. And yes, the Fujitsu/Michelob boat from the Cathouse web site, was sold and delivered to the new owner in early July. It will be sailing in the Albany, New York area. Had I not had a slight stroke that took away strength on my left side, it would still be sailing in Michigan and Minnesota.