Hi everybody,

I'm a former french F18 sailors, and since I arrived in US 8 months ago I'm getting interested by the Formula 16. I'm thinking of buying a Blade in the near future...
I also have been promoting the Formula 16 on the french cat forum, and now some people would like to have an opportunity to sail a blade. That would be very smart for the class to enourage this. The manufacturer of the F104 cat (spitfire, cirrus evolution, mattia) could then think to build also a F16 compliant model.
Is there any blade in france or nearby?

tom_in_fire

Apart from UK, Holland, Germany boats?

The nearest F16 for any french sailors will be :

Blade F16 in Kokzijde (Belgium) ; should not be to far away from Boulogne Conception Marine (Cirrus designers). The owner frequents this forum and his is called Gill.

and

The Stealth F16 and Taipan F16's in Switzerland ; lake Geneva and the surrounding lakes. Their owners are not regulary readers of this forum.


The French market is very hard to penetrate. Especially since many of us do not speak and write French very well.

Any help will be warmly welcomed.

As such I advice you to contact the F16 Governing Council and coordinate any idea's that you have with them. If indeed a group of French sailors want to test sail a Blade F16 then I think that the European Blade importer would be very interested in working something out. Contact him through info@catamaranparts.nl . The European importer for the AHPC Viper F16's is Remco Kenbeek and he may well take the Viper along to say Carnac. He can be contacted through info@sailcenter.nl . Sadly there is no European importer for the Stealths at this time, but maybe something can be arranged with a private Stealth sailor for next years Carnac.

Personally I would love for some French crews to test sail the F16's and possibly have some French designers be attracted to designing and building a local F16. First and foremost because the French sailing scene is a world on its own. No class is truly international unless the French are part of it as well. And becoming succesful in French is a major boost to the depth of the F16 class, but in designs and sailors.

Wouter

errrm Wouter, there's no need for a European importer of Stealths since they're built in Europe!!!!

At least, we keep being told that the UK is part of Europe!

John Pierce of Stealth Marine can be contacted via the company website: www.stealthmarine.co.uk

So this EU collaboration really sinking in then.

And right you are of course !

I should have written "Continental importer"

I'm sure that with enough interest, John Pierce is also willing to come over to France to demo his Stealth F16.

My mistake, sorry.

Wouter

I would love to see F16 making it's way into France and I don't care if it is Viper, Stealth, Taipan or Blade.
Just as long as the French get the chance to see what F16 has to offer.

Regards,
Phill

I thought the French were promoting that new Youth cat, the SL 16? Is that a growing class? It is a bit heavy for the F16 class and no daggerboards too. I was hoping they would choose the F16 for the youth boat instead of that.

The ISAF committee wanted to have a "kiddies" version of a high performance sailboat instead of a true high performance design.

Basically, daggerboards were disallowed and there were a few other requirements that took all the fun out of the design.

I still fail to see why ALL the mono's sailed by kids have daggerboards, from the opti up to the laser and 29-ers but the youth catamaran was required to have none !

I know AHPC was interested in making the Taipan 4.9 an entry for the new ISAF youth boat, but they refused to put things like rubber bumpers on the bows and remove essentials parts like daggerboards from the design. The (very young) F16 class at the time felt the same way and just ignored these ISAF trails believing the design likely to be chosen would be a hard sell anyway.

I still feel this way. Afterall, 12.500 Euro's for a 150 kg and very simple fitted-out SL16 is not attractive when compared to a 14.165 euro's for a fully fitted race-ready and truly fast F16 at 110 kg. I've just seen the quoted price for the Hobie Max (lost out to the SL16) and I was amazed to see it quoted higher then a F16. Now, that is just wrong !

I feel the ISAF committee missed a "slam dunk" here. They should have gone for the Taipans and be done with it. They didn't and as luck would have it this new SL16 youth class has to fight an uphill battle against a score of better designs in a quickly developping beach cat scene.

Basically they try to sell a totally new One-Design class in a scene that has so convincingly chosen to prefer the Formula setup (A-cat, Tornado, F18 and F16). Added to this is the fact that the class is too narrowly defined for youths. This will make marketing it to adult crews so much more difficult.

Wouter

Ok a silly idea.. F16 channel trophy!! beach running start to running finish line..
Hell if a 16 year old Aussie girl can swim the channel & return the poms and frogs should be able to sail it one way!!

I'm prepared to do the Freo to Rotto and return!!

Tom,

I'm based in Knokke-Heist (VVW Heist). I don't know where you live but I'm certainly interested in taking you for a sail if you want to.

What I can tell for sure is that you will sail as fast on the F16 as you did on the F18.

I'm sure it would be more interesting for Cirrus to built an F16 compliant model instead of their 16 foot boat they have now.

Next year I'm planning to sail the regatta at Carnac. And I hope some other F16 sailors will be there too, to get France interested.

Regards,
Gill

Thanks guys,

I've forwarded the message to the french cata forum. There is now a lot of discussion around F16 and that's a good news!
Thanks gill to offer a test ride, but even if I put my 2 cents comment in the french forum, I live now in seattle... Maybe some other french will want to try...
I will keep the forum informed about any meaningfull information read in the french forum.
I really hope that this will help to get more sailor and builder in the F16 class. I'm pressing hard to that end

Ciao,
thomas.

Tom,

Where is that French language forum ?

Writing French is hard for me but often I'm able to pick a few things by reading it.

Wouter

Wouter,

here is the link to the french forum:
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/cata/

And there is also a good news coming from it, a new bimare F16 compliant should be available in 2008!

Ciao,
thomas.

I can't find the thread where the F16's are discussed, only the posts about a new F104 class. Can you give us the direct link to the posts of interest ? Especially the one talking about the Bim F16 (full compliant).

Sorry, I had a brain blackout, the site has a search engine. I typed in F16 and found the bimare F16 posting immediately.

http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/cata/message/17522

Babelfish translation for the people who can't read French very well :



Wouter

The French are talking about creating a F104 formula class, refering to the 104 handicap rating under SCHRS (ISAF measurement handicap system).

http://class104.over-blog.org/

Basically it refers to all boats having a handicap of 104 and slower racing together in a single class. It seems some races have even been held this way. This rating encloses the Spitfire, Cirrus Evolution, Mattia Esse and the Hobie FX-one.

It however a bit funny when one poster on the blogs got enthousiastic about a F104 being launched in Australia, the AHPC Viper. Took the F16 class about 4 years to get AHPC to build a purpose build F16 and then some F104 class claims it ! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Basically the F104 is the same as the F16 class was at its start-up 6.5 years ago. Grouping of similar performant boats. F16 grew into a class of its own right very quickly with the adoption of the F16 class rules only 5 months later.

There is also the mentioning of 10 Spitfire crews upgrading their boat with custom build sails (pentex) and thus leaving the One-Design-ness of the Spitfire class. Things seem to be moving or at least that is what the posters on the blogs are suggesting.

All very interesting stuff

Wouter

But, but but, why? Dont they know about the F-16 class?

AFAIK the creation of the F104 class has received a negative review by the FFV (National French Sailing Federation). All they are doing so far is asking regatta organizers to provide a separate result for only 1.04 compliant boats. But of course as the SCHRS changed for all cats recently, the 1.04 is completely obsolete anyway...

Interesting,

Although as a person who went through a similar project some years ago I didn't expect them to get somewhere quickly. As I remember it, creating a new class took 1000's of man hours by a dedicated group of people. And even then you'd steer nerve reckingly close to the threshold of collapsing the class halve the time.

For a project of that magnitude to succeed requires a huge effort and some good old fashioned luck at the right moments.

This is the reason why we see so very little new classes succeed at all.

Wouter

Actually the reason why I put my two cents in the french forum was to specify that the viper was not a F104 but a F16.

In many ways, the F104 is very close to the F16 and in france and UK, I believe that they are well installed. I don't have the number, but I think that there is more F104 in france and UK than F16 in the world... I must add that the class is growing, not declining despite all the rating issue.

I submitted the idea on the french forum than french manufacturer should launch sport catamaran which could be set as a F104 or a F16. My understanding of the catamaran manufacturing is that designing the hull and build the mould is a costly difficult process. I think it should be possible for them to design a hull compliant with both class and they can change the material and the weight of the hull to fit the wishes of the buyer...
That's almost what bimare will do with their new cat.
I think that F16 and F104 has to converge and my opinion is that it should be possible to make the F104 come to the F16. In my opinion, fighting against the F104 in france for now will be pointless...

The first thing is to create a buzz around the class (I'm trying).
The second thing would be to invite some journalist (from multihull for example, which is published in french and english) to try a blade.

If french manufacturers sense that there is a growing interest among the french sailors, they will design such a catamaran. They read the french forum and I think they read magazines.

That was my two cents...


Ciao,
thomas, who don't even have a F16!!!