If anybody's interested we are having a few F16's get together here at my club, Grande Maumelle Sailing Club, over Labor Day. THREE Taipans and one Blade-
Two of the guys are new to F16 ownership so we are going to do a tune and rig day on Saturday and race in the regatta on Sunday. If anyone is interested come on down/up/over! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Kirt
Taipan #159

Welcome back Kirt... what is the location? I am not going to be able to make it this weekend, but I want to put it on my schedule to get out there sometime. I am glad to hear the fleet building in your area.

Tom-
Location is Lake Maumelle, about 10 miles west of Little Rock, AR. Jody is here from Chattanooga, TN on his Blade and Rob is here on his Taipan from Tyler, TX, Bob from College Station, TX had last minute family things come up so couldn't make it. We had great (for us!) wind today and rigged and tuned against each other most of the day but managed one race. Jody won with myself second and Rob third. Planning to do more racing tomorrow. Jody and I traded off boats for awhile and that was interesting comparing the Taipan and Blade back-to-back. I would have to say the most prevalent "feeling" we each had was the comparative "size" of the two boats, with the Blade feeling much "bigger" than the Taipan and we both felt that way! In terms of speed there was not much difference and it was hard to tell what accounted for what difference there was since there were numerable differences between the two Taipans and the Blade. I was using my bow line "tacking" Goodall spinnaker with a cobbled-together "snuffer" and was able to stay with the other 2 F16's using conventional poles/midpole snuffers and spinnakers. Wind was 8-12mph and somewhat flukey but we did some very long spinnaker runs and whichever boat managed to get a puff or was sailed better got the lead. Jody and I are planning to see you in B'ham in October!

Kirt

Sounds like a good time. The Taipan's seem to have plenty of speed, that I've seen...

We had similar conditions in AL yesterday (good for this time of year). I took an 11 yr old and 8 yr old out for club racing. They race Opti's a bunch and had been on a rental Wave before - so they new what was going on. Needless to say, they liked the ride. The 11 yr was flying the chute (I'd help him set and douse) and did a great job. They can't wait to get back out there.

Great news on Cat Caper in October. Oley/Joanna will be there as well. Hopefully, Jody . . . maybe we can squeeze a few more in from somewhere.

I will be at Cat capers. Looking forward to it.
Kirt is right about the difference in the size of the boats. Did not think a few inches in width would make that much difference but wow. On the tiapan I felt cramped. Did notice stuff was a little lighter looking on the 4.9 then the blade, (like the bungee and trap wires being smaller) and Kirt said the boat has to carry corrector weights. Would be intresting to see the difference of weight in the boats. Tom any chance of having a scale for cat capers? Just for our own information, nothing offical.
Day 2 was a little more separation between the boats. upwind was not a big difference (believe a lot of it is due to me having a new sail with the big head and Kirt using the orgianl goodall sail he got with the boat) but downwind there seemed to be some more separation which I am not sure if it was a difference in the boats, spin setup, wind (which on the lake was different every 100 yards) or what. Know kirt was still having some problems with his snuffing system. Sat when we were playing downwind the 2 of us with poles did not seem that much faster or deeper then kirt off the bows. Will be intresting to see how that works out at cat capers.
It was a fun weekend and think we made some monohull guys notice us more and even consider joining our group. Might now be a time to invest in vectorworks? The hobie of this century?