Personally I think that having a skeg is attractive. I see a market share for an inexpensive F16 boat that is very performant but not totally geared towards racing. I do get quite a number of inquiries from people wanting an F16 because of its low weight, good looks and versatility but for which 14.500 Euro's is too steep. We try to get these people to second hand boats but there are only so many around of these. Always too few !

The Nacra 500 is selling well overhere without any class structure or racing precisely for the reasons of it being good looking, reasonably performant and inexpensive at 10.000 Euro's. I can see the RC16 fill that gap from the F16 side of the market.

And of course when these recreational sailors want to race once or twice a year then having a set of well designed skegs will not be an objection to them; afterall a well designed set of these will maintain a pretty good upwind performance relative to boarded cats. The difference is not more then 1 minute per 45 minute windward/leeward racing. These recreational racers will already loose in the order of 5-10 minutes in such a race due to lacking sailor skills, even when the are relatively skilled.

Yes, I do see some market potential for the RC16; but ONLY if it is lightweight enough. That is critical !

Also, if I may, the deck on the hulls can be tidied up a little bit to improve the looks. Also this is very important in making the sail. A smooth well curved deck is halve the sale in my experience.

Also F16arg, we as the F16 class have a class deal on the Superwing wingmast design. You can have a set of these masts for cost price. This is an excellent lightweight mast that has stood up to any abuse extremely well. It will need diamond wires but that is not a big cost factor if you make your own glass or carbon fibre fixed length spreader arms. That two is cheap and lightweight. The bare 8.5 mtr section weights 14 kg's and is the lightest mast on the market for 16 foot boats.

If you are making an official F16 then you can use this mast. With this mast and a 15 sq. mtr. mainsail a lightweight boat will start to approximate A-cat performance. Of course with such an F16 mast you can make use of the sail development that has been done so far. Several sailmakers are offering custom F16 sails, optimized for that setup. The right sails are halve the performance !

There are also lightweight F16 optimized beams available for any F16 builder. These are custom designed and extruded beams of high yield stress aluminium for the F16. They weight 4.1 kg per beam if I remember correctly and are as stiff as 90x2 round alu sections. These also have integrated trampoline tracks and have flat bottom and upper sections so it is easier to fit spacers inside the beam and fast fittings to the beams.




I expect it to be pretty good.



Looking over the pictures I like the use of the spray rails along the hulls. From the Spitfire sailors I hear this works well to keep the crew more dry then usual.

Best of luck and please do keep us informed.


Wouter

The only picture with a clear deck view is the orange ones and that´s the male model with decks cutouts.




Weight is around 140Kg need to confirm, but we have a really heavy mast section and beams.
Construction is made in Coremat to reduce costs.




Thanks for the offer, I'll keep it in mind.
For Sails, again, this sail is a recreational one.
I also have a deal with Andrew Landenberger for F18 sails, just received our first set.
So Landy´s could be a nice option in Europe... I don´t know better performance sails <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

So as told after march we'll make a full racing version prototype, the F16 Class Assoc through some of its members can have the boat at cost so you can have a 1st hand "look"







Super dry ride! and we made the spray rails all the way.
Main features of the 16 along rails is volume, outofthebox concave-channel stern, looks and performace.

Sebastien Magnen was in San Isidro working on his boat for several months and he was really interested in the stern design, sadly he couldn´t sailed her. This cat is dedicated to him and his custom and amazing Cat designs.

What the hell is THAT???? You built a beach cat with a TORPEDO TUBE??? What do you intend to do with that?

You are taking the Malvinas/Faulkland Island revenge thing WAY too far - you have to just let it go.

What the F.. has to do Falklands with cat sailing?????????
You greatest ignorant? War is no joke David, is clear you don´t have a clue.

If you mean that we use grey in our cats to resemble Super Etendard squadron and their great pilots you're right.

Judging your photo ABOVE sailing your "Viper"????... yikes! my god!!

Our "torpedo" with full racing rig beats that cat you´re riding any day!

You have my word on it.


When you don´t know to whom you're talking to is better not to get off the road joking about other topics, even more regarding war themes.

In my family we have one of the greates naval pilots and commanders of all time and current Commodore of our F18 Fleet.


Off Now, thought we were talking about cats here.

Cheers,

Martin,

In this image, about 1/3 aft from the bow, low on the hull, is an elliptical shape that you may say looks like a...torpedo tube. Sorry for David's comments.

Thank you for replying to my email questions and thank you for posting the photos and contributions on this site. It is always good to hear from builders. Please continue posting of your progress. Hope to speak with you again soon and best of luck in your endeavors.

So you REMOVED the actual photo of your boat that showed AN ENORMOUS FLAW in the lower hull that looks like a torpedo tube in the bow of a submarine? And what's wrong with my photo? You might learn about a proper boomless main sail by looking at its stiff, flat foot instead of your soft shapeless blob of a main.

And as for the Malvinas? Twenty-six years later, we certainly do remember the 907 dead soldiers. (long rebuttal deleted)

So back to your boat. What can you say about that HUGE flaw in your hull that you've now chosen to hide from view? Things like that can happen in prototypes, I guess. It's OK with me. Let's laugh because the hole DOES look like a torpedo tube. And try to stiffen up that mainsail, OK?

Peace, and in our lifetime.

Its interesting how easily text and its context gets misconstrued at times. So I wont discuss Tango!!

Anyway welcome to the F16 family ... Im a little curious as to the weight . Its a tad heavy at 140Kg..

Good luck with your projects.. It will be fantastic to see a Tango F16 !!


<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

David,

what on earth are you doing. Please dont mix politics into the forum or we might as well close it down.
If I see what I think is a flaw in sombodys work, I try to ask about it in a non-offensive way if I want to know about it. Builders put a lot of work and parts of themself into boats and that should be respected. Same for giving advice.

Hope you succeed and get an F-16 to market Martin! That would be fantastic. I dont know what the potential market is like in Latin America? For the F-16 class it would be a major leap forward to have a builder and active class in Latin America!
If you need a source of revenue, there is always demand for good rudders.. Homebuilders frequently need daggerboards as well.

I'm not sure what you are playing at David, but bringing up that conflict is NOT smart. Also the wording itself is lost on me, doesn't even sound much like a joke.

Sorry,

Wouter

David

One thing is to read about things like "This F16 has no boom, spreaders, etc" or "look at that sail" or whatever when we are offering a recreational boat.

I've answered to those all misleading concepts in a good manner (as we've never pretend in a first stage to offer an F16)

But when I've read your really offensive comment was too much abuse to take in a an international forum for free.

After taking your abuse there you have the photo again that was replaced for your photo as I couldn´t believed I was taking s from that sailor, sorry about that.

For that modification was made by my cousin who builds wakeboard boats and owns the boatyard (now he´s an Catamaran addict as pictures shows) and he pretended to give his personal touch, with a Regal boats like bottom form, as is was not going to interfere with performance I leave him do it.


Don´t get me wrong, I'm always getting feedback and I can absorv any critic, but in a constructive way. You can even tell "that piece of S**" that I'm would take no offense, but talking Falkands was too low.


So guys, to end this topic: If we want to be part of the F16 project will contact you, as I did in 2005 with the F18 class, we are the only ones promoting High Performance cats in South America.


In our site you can read in Spanish description for the boat: "Pensado para el mercado de recreación. Sin foque, sin orzas, sin complicaciones..."

"Thought for the recreational market, Without jib, no daggers, no extra worries"

But surely we designed the platform thinking in the class that´s why we wrote a small "1st F16 LA" in other page.

Our 16 is pure fun now, when we'll upgrade the rig you'll get the photos and videos.

Here you have a closer look to that mark and good proof of rails working good.



Cheers

Gentlemen, you read WAY too much into my comment.

1) I thought the hole in the hull looked like a torpedo tube. It does! And the idea of arming a beach cat is funny and has been a parody before. Remember the On the Wire E-Zine about the anti-PWC rockets? Silly and funny, as was the torpedo tube idea.

2) The very brief 19-word reference to an old navel conflict was in jest, meant to laugh at the silly armed beachcat idea. If you won't allow a bittersweet laugh at a long-past and unfortunate war you will drown in your grief. The U.S.government provides its citizens with an endless supply stupid wars that we regret and can gently joke about after 25+ years.

No politics nor offense was intended. The hole in the hull is odd and looks like an outer torpedo tube . That's it. And that's still funny.

You all need to lighten up a bit. Go sailing.

Again I say, no politics nor offense was intended.

Martin,

I think that your 16ft hull design is really interesting! I think I can see what you are trying to achieve with the concave stern underside and the 'sprayrail'. I think it's fascinating to see peeople trying different ideas on these boats and only head-to-head testing will show us what works and what possibly doesn't.

You say the all up weight of the RC16 is 140Kg? Have you actually weighed it or is that a 'calculated' weight? If you put a full F16 rig on the boat with the associated jib track and fittings plus spin gear, we're looking at what? an extra 15Kg perhaps? - that's a pretty hefty F16 at 155Kg! Are there any opportunities for weight saving in the platform?

I'm just thinking that with the external stiffening offered by the spray rail there may be the chance to reduce the hull layup further? It would be really cool to get a boardless F16 that is under say 120Kg or even closer to the minimum of 107Kg for a sloop F16.... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

To me it resembles the Dart 16, a roto molded recreational boat, because of the spray rails. Can you post a picture Dermot?

What I tried to achieve is more 'track' and a better flow to maximize the lower performance of daggerless hull.

Exactly, only head to head testing will tell us how good this extreme shape is doing.

As for now, the boat is really palanning in high winds and drag is being greatly reduced in lower ones, just look at the picture took from backwards.



I'm calculating over, but remember that we are using coremat to reduce costs.

You´re right again, all the way sprayrails, gives a 'T' shape to hull sidewards, making it a lot more stronger, add that we've have a 'curved' deck and you´re talking about one of the better structural shapes possible for a cat.

The boat is not heavy at all indeed, and I´ve wrote before, we are using heavy profiles for masts and beams.

Regarding design:
Lead by Sebastien Magnen comments on a better structural curved bow design (he owns a Dart Hawk back in France) I've studied the Hawk , the Spitfire and its predecessor the Dart 16 itself, but the lines are 100% original as the prototype and current production hull (no nodification at all till now) was issued from our F18 orignal hull mold(Designed from scratch with Tornado, Bulogne's Cirrus, and J Valer Tiger as models)

I also noted the use of Srayrails in several new cat designs, as the Alinghi for ie. Some research and pictures proved me that they were really functional, more here with our short breaking waves.


In fact I almost applied the channels and concaves to the F18 desing in July 2005 but it was too much for a 1st boat.

This past winter due to demand for a recreational and more afforadable boat I spent some months cad designing and shaping myself the 16 prototype.

As here we have muddy waters and short breaking waves conditions I´ve never thought of and inverted bow design. Also our most distinctive feature is great volume, we have almost 70cm freeboard for the F18 and 62cm aprox for the 16. We need high beams and extra flotation here.

Till now we proved right with these extra volumes as we are having huge margin to 'attack' in a reach or with Spi, or getting out of incredible pitch pole situations, just take a look to this spi F18 video at after the flag footage, any other cat would have go down. I was getting better with Spi at that time, in fact was my 1st time with 20knots winds, so is full credit to the hulls that we've didn´t pitch pole hard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K3bSBHO0Kc rarely offshore winds and persistent non breaking waves that day.

So that´s the story behind our designs, 'torpedo tube' included, but hey, always some crazy guys are innovating, let see how far channels and concaves get in cat designs.

As Martin says, both the Spitfire and the Dart 16 have the spray rails.
Someone else can find photos - I'm relaxing, sipping a little drop of Red, just back from a rugby international match in Croke Park where Ireland have just barely beaten Italy. Now that's the same Croke Park where Ireland absolutely hammered England last year - in retribution for a massacre in 1922, in the same Croke Park, where England ......... nobody has longer memories that the Irish <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Nice! Well our biggest Football game is tomorrow, 6pm east coast time, New England Patriots vs. the New York Giants. Should be a good game, I'll be into the Guinness for sure! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> And since I had to suffer for years in my early childhood watching the Boston Patriots lose year after year, I am glad they finally have a good team.

From what I can remember I enjoyed a certain Rugby match yesterday. Wales beating the old enemy England.
Cymru am Byth (Wales Forever)

Watched it last night - England had it easy, until Wales woke up and came right back. Brilliant ! Of course we have to play them in a few weeks <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Hey, how's that Brains Beer? Sounds like it might lead to a loss of a few cells! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />