Well ive heard that a taipan isn't a good boat, well not as good as the hobie 16. I also heard if you hit something with your rudders you can fit a hobie 18 center board in it. Is it true does the boat brake easy.


Jules

Sorry dont know many boats that have "brakes"... But if you wish I guess you can take a sea anchor with you..

Is the T4.9 better than a H16? Well probably not if your into sailing slowly.. Definately not if your into sailing in a break hoping to turtle.. Or if your looking to hit something with the rudders (is this your normal sailing priority? Ohh look something to hit *crunch*)... Then go destroy a H16 (someone needs to do that on a regular basis)

I dont own a T4.9 however.. (because I cant build a foam T4.9 legally) But its been proven faster than almost any other 16 footer for a decade.. Sailed well doesnt have a bad record in terms of breakages.. Is enjoyable..Its light and thus easy on the back to move.. Has competative racing (at least in Au takes those in the north a decade to learn what we have known here for a long time)..

Enjoy yourself troll..

The Taipan 4.9 is well-constructed high performance lightweight boat. I have had 2 x 4.9s, which were both second hand and now have a 5.7 with spinnaker, mainly because my son and I weight in at 175 kg.

We sail in Moreton Bay in Brisbane, Australia, often in 15+ knots and occasionally in over 20 knots and have been caught out there in a 30-knot front a few times. Two metres of stand up chop on the outgoing tide is common, turtles, large jelly fish, sharks and the odd dugong.

I have damaged two centreboards over the years on submerged rocks, my fault, no damage to casing. We use kick up rudders because of the jellyfish and the turtles.
No jellyfish this year yet, probably the drought.

I have also seen some spectacular collisions; let me tell you these boats are strong.

It is not a barge; one must remember to lift centreboards and rudders at the beach.

My first 4.9 was about 6 years old when I bought it and I raced it most weekends for 3 years.

Got side swiped by an out of control power boat, only three tiny marks in the gel coat, and it hit with a thud.

Don't run them up the beach and they will last for years.
The second hand boats really hold there value over here and that is a big plus as far as I am concerned.

don

Jules,

Just a few posts earlier to your post, Mike Crawford gave a description of a collision he had with another Taipan 4.9 at the US nationals. I quote :

Race three was fun until we ran into the back of the GYC’s commodore’s new 4.9. He hit the “C” mark and proceeded to do a penalty turn right at the mark. I assumed instead that he would clear the mark and turn between “A” and “C” somewhere. I was readying the boat for upwind and was just hooking up for wire work when I looked up to see him sitting dead in the water 20 feet in front. Ron was skippering at the time and we had no time to react. We hit him square in the rear crossbar three times before we finally stopped. It was a hard crunch and I thought there would be major damage, but was surprised to find only small missing pieces of gel coat. Wow!


From this account I gether that the Taipan is stirdy enough to take a good hit without sustaining more than just cosmetic damage. This seems to me as the right description for near all beach catamarans.

Jack

Hey

Well i think ive given you all a feeling that i dont like taipans. Its just that isn't the taipan a high maintanace baot? Because The hobie dealer had sailed a 4.9 taipan and bent 2 booms in one hour. This is one of the main reasons why i haven't gone out and got one.

Say I was going to go out and buy one what would you say n what fibure the hulls should be made out of and what should i look for.

Well got to go and sail my hobie 16 now, have fun sailing and ill talk to you all soon.

Jules

The 4.9 is the best boat I have had - I have owned Hobies and Nacras and Taipan has the best fit and finish of any boat I have seen. It makes American boats look crude. Sure it doesn't have a half an inch of glass on the bottom of the hull so you use wheels which is a piece of cake because of the weight. I was recently trying to help a H16 with a downed mast in some heavy conditions and had the 16 hit so hard that it knocked a sailor off the 16. I dreaded looking at the damage on my boat - I got up the courage and looked over the side and I couldn't tell where we had been hit - zero damage. At the 18ht/f16hp event in the Keys lots of f18hts were commenting on the quality of the Taipan. If I buy another boat - it will definitely be another Boyer.

Jules the guys are a little bit jumpy because "breaking when you look at it" is a common trick deployed by others to give lightweight boats a bad name. And in most instances it is not founded in facts.

Surely Hobie 16 and Prindle 16 hulls are build like a tank although I must say that I had quite a few travellers pop out of the Hobie track and ruptured a few Prindle castings. So what is low maintainance ?

Now, if the local hobie dealor says he popped two booms within one hour than we'll just have to take his word for it; although it doesn't really strike me as "normal" experience on a Taipan 4.9. And I would love to say Hobie alternative as their booms on newly sold hobie designs are now made in the same way as the Taipan boom and from memory it is even the same diameter tube.

With respect to answering your questions :

Glass hulls = good dependable hull, nothing wrong with those

Kevlar reinforced hulls = Makes the hulls a little more resistant to denting and impacting point loads. From what I know these hulls don't differ significantly with regard to stiffness and such from the glass hulls.

Timber hulls = A funny thing about timber is that these Taipans have proven to have at least as long competitive life span a as the fibre boats. Timber boats of 10 years old are still very much competing for first places in the Taipan Nationals. Ofcourse Timber has a differ way of breaking than glass when the impact forces are high enough but it doesn't seem to be weak at all. It is even claimed that timber is easier to repair than glass. Timber did always had the advantage that boats could be build to minimum weight, something that took some doing with the fibre boats.

Personally I did some research on timber boats and the comments and info I got made me decide to go for a timber hull. So you may say it got me convinced.

What I suggest is that you try to talk to as many Taipan sailors as you can in private mail and find out what you can. I'm also sure that one of the Asutralian guys will be very willing to take you along for a full scale test ride. Do it and make up your own opinion. It has proven to be the best approach in the past, There has not been one single Taipan sailor/owner who wasn't very positive about the design and its behaviour.

Have fun sailing and till next time

Wouter

Hey

The main reason i haven't got a taipan right now is for 4 reasons.
1. I cant find one for reasonable price
2. Since im only 16 and weight 68 i was told that i would learn more in a hobie 16 and i ont weight enough to keep it flat.
3. I sail at a club which sails hobies only but the other club does sail taipans but i feel like a younging since the youngest person ive seen sail a taipan is about 26
4. Not sure if the taipan is the best way to go, even though a taipan is a great boat the tiger seems to be a better boat to me but at the moment i have no idea.
5. High Maintance is a good and bad but finance wise isn't to good for a boat like that.

With these reasons this throws me in to confusion again.

With HIGH/LOW maintance i meen for do they need alot off work for example.
I bought my hobie 16 about 1 or 2 years ago and i have put a lot of work into it and now i have not broken any thing from when i put the new gear on. So i haven't had to do any maintance since ive fixed up my boat which was from the first month.
I cant see how you broke the traveler car because i haven't come any where near that and i dont sail in strong winds but when i sailed it in about 35 knots i still didn't brake it. The only way you would of broken it is if you dont normaly sail them because you are ment to tie a knot on the travelor sheet so it stops the cart from hiting the edge of the boat.

Well i thank all of you for your help i think i real need it.

Jules

Jules,

My first boat was a Hobie 16 when I was 15 years old. I weighed around 130lbs (dunno what that is in kilos) at the time. It was a good first boat because it was cheap and it made me never want another H-16. Don't get me wrong- I thoroughly enjoyed sailing it, but I quickly realized it is a poor design. I sold the H-16 in less than a year, and haven't touched one since. In my opinion they are about the worst sailboat design on the planet. Low bouyancy hulls means it won't handle enough weight to sail well in heavy air. Low bouyancy bows make it super-easy to pitchpole. The pillar/platform trampoline design makes it impossible to keep stiff- the hulls walk like crazy. Low-aspect asymetrical hull shape doesn't even work until you're flying one hull out of the water, and even then it doesn't work as well as a center/dagger-board boat.

It's a 1960s boat, designed with 1960s materials in mind, and competitive with other 60s and some 70s designs. Almost anything developed in the 70s-80s will outperform it, and everything developed in the 90s will.(even some of the Hobie Waves are being sailed well enough to keep pace to the H16!)

Wood is an excellent building material for sailboats. By weight, it is 7 times stiffer than fiberglass and 5 times stiffer than kevlar. Used as a core with fiberglass sheathing it can be built stronger and lighter than almost anything but carbon-fiber.

You will be able to go faster on a T4.9 without pushing it as much as the H16. You'll be able to point higher by footing a T4.9 when you'd be trapezing off the back of a H16 to avoid stuffing the bow. You'll be able to push a T4.9 much harder than a H16 because, again, you won't have to worry about stuffing the bow. You can right a T4.9 more easily because it weighs less. You can manuever it better because it has boards and, again, it weighs less. The T4.9 should be less likely to suffer a failure, because it's lighter weight puts less stress on critical components.

I suspect that Hobie dealer is more interested in selling Hobies than finding out what the competition has put out on the market. Go sail a T4.9 yourself, sail the H16 directly after, sail the T4.9 again... make your own observations and choose which boat works best for you.

jules,
im only 14 and way 70 kg and i have no problem with wait or anything i am actuly ordering a spinaker for more power down wind,the taipan 4.9 is a great strong light fast boat witch will stick around for many years

kurt
aus029

Im going down to your second local sailing club to try one out but i keep on hearing about how weak they are and they aren't that good. Would people say the boat is as strong as the hobies around even though they are resort boats.


Jules