I think everybody would feel sad if somebody has sold you a 18kg tube to put on top of your boat, when you discover that you could have bought a carbon tube for the same price: 500£ What is cost effective in that for the buyer?

It is always somebody else his fault right ? Never your own !

You would maybe have a point if you were adviced to get alu while the persons doing the advising had carbon themselves. But as a matter of fact neither the designer of the Blade F16, the builders VWM, Australian Formula cats and AHPC nor I myself are sailing with anything other the alu.

Forgive us for advising something to you that we felt was good enough for ourselves !

I'm sorry to hear that you are unsatisfied with the Alu superwing mast, that you are unable to build down to minimum weight, that the Pixie and F12 are alot easier and quicker to construct. I'm sorry to hear that this will be end of F16 in Finland, but you really can't lay this on our doorstep. There is such a thing as your own responsibility in these matters. Hell, we also weren't there to tell you that you should have bought a Toyota instead of an Opel automobile.

I'm truly sorry Gato, I'm very happy with my 121.8 kg homebuild F16 with an alu mast and 8.3 kg tipweight. It is the right boat for me and I've never gone this fast on the water for an investment of 12.000 Euro's. If your threshold of satisfaction is so much higher then mine (or others like the Blade F16 designer) then I guess we just have a difference of opinion and the F16 class is not for you.

Wouter

The quotes I held at the time (even from Stealthmarine directly) were considerably higher then 500 pounds.

Wouter

There is nothing wrong with the hulls, it’s what’s “going around”. There is the first A cat coming to Finland so my thoughts are drifting in that direction...

So is it correct that there have been two different dies (I wasn't aware of that), or is that the part of the post you are saying you don't understand?

I've read the thread a couple of times, but I'm not sure I'm understanding your concern Gato. Can you clarify - is it that you feel that you won't be able to right the boat, or that your boat is not going to make minimum weight? Or that you bought a mast that doesn't have minimum tip weight? Or something else?

There are NO TWO DIFFERENT DIES of the superwing mast that I know off.

As far as I can tell there is only one; but while I'm often pretty up-to-date on these matters I can always be wrong.

I have been part of a project to design a new alu mast to replace the Superwing section but that project was put on hold before a new die was made. To my knowlegde this project has not been revived. Maybe that is the source of the rumour ?

Wouter

Well, was thinking to stop, but as you ask, one of the reason is that it’s very hard to get a straight answer to a simple question. Take as an example my question about the die, either the one who knows doesn’t want to answer or has not seen the question or is hiding the truth of some other reason, those who don’t know do better leaving the question unanswered. For me it’s clear, if you take a new die in use you check the result. And as the old die was giving tubes 14-15 kgs you expect something like that when buying no?

The A-cats are excellent boats. It is very understandable to have your thoughts drifting that way. If that class is suiting your mindset better then by all means go for it.

If you want to homebuild an A then I can assure you that the available building plans for A's are alot less complete and alot more dated then the F16 plans. Building a 75 kg timber A-cat to min weight will be alot more challenging then building a F16 down to weight.

But maybe we have another solution. Considering you feel so passionate about a carbon mast and having it replace the aluminium one then why not do exactly that ?

Order 2 carbon masts from Stealthmarine (after getting a definate price quote) and ship the alu masts back to catamaranparts where they are sold off as secondhand. Sure you'll loose some money in the proces, but building c.q. buying a complete new A-cat will cost lots more.

Or better still, sell your alu masts to the Norwegians and Swedes. There is a Swedish Taipan owner who bend his mast when his boat tipped over in a blow. You guys will meet in the spring time for a Scandinavia F16 regatta right ? Maybe the perfect opportunity for selling off your alu masts while getting some good return of investment. Then you can order the carbon masts and be happy again. I'm sure Rolf is interested in the mast, if not his friend who ordered a new F16 design but that still needs to be shipped to him. Removing the mast shipping costs may well be attractive to him.

It's an idea.

Wouter

I'm happy, just started to make the first half of the mast for the DS12.

If it's true that anyone is concealing information (and I have no knowledge that that's the case) I'm certain that the vast majority of us here are interested in openness and clarity. So can I ask what the source of the 14-15kg figure is? Wouter indicated earlier that as far as he knows there has only been one die. There seems to be some misunderstanding floating around somewhere. I'm sure we can get to the bottom of it.

The source of that is Phill, had a private discussion with him.

The boffins are working on the spar issue.........

Give them time..

Thanks. I guess he won't be online for at least some hours, but hopefully he can shed some light on the discussion.

How much would a die cost?

Just a quick reply for some points (I didn't have time to read this through properly).

1) There has to be two dies because our wall thickness is 1.85 mm and generally the thickness should be 1.6 mm (15.6 % more), also AFAIK Marcus posted that AUS Blade has 17 kg's total weight with standing rigging.
2) General message in this forum is that it's not that big difference which clearly isn't so. It's my fault that I didn't get quotes from another places and discussed weights before ordering but I trusted posts in this forum. I really don't think that we have enough data available (like T's post their mast measurement online) and people are not usually willing to talk about difficult matters.
3) Gato generalized too much with his formula but with university physics righting is basically two moments i.e. moment of the boat and skippers moment against it and if we have heavier mast the CG moves towards the top. Of course boats moment changes depending on it's angle, but still fact is that skipper has to have lot more weight if we slap few kg's to mast. If I have to have 10 kg's righting aid it's starting to be a problem and all this could have been done with let's say any other cat, whole F16 appeal to me was versatility.

I'll read this thread and write proper reply later when I get my kid to sleep in few hours.

I dont know anything about the superwhing that is not commonly known and have been posted on this forum. I do know that a die will wear out over time and that the later batches will have thicker walls. I would think that is the issue here? The superwings are made by Goodall and not the F16 class so we dont have complete control over them.
£500 for a bare carbon tube from JohnP?? Whow, that is a good price. Unless you really want a wingmast or an alu mast, that sounds like a really good option. I dont think there is other reasons for not pointing you in the direction of Stealth Marine and JohnP than simply not thinking about it or not knowing the price. After your posts about the issue, I am certain others who ask about mast tubes will be informed about both options. Dont help you much unfortunately. Unless you build another F16 (a DS-F16 would be very interesting. We need a hard chine design) and sell the Blade. Probably not a very attractive option for you at this time.

The largest difference I see between the A and the F16 is the spi. Personally, I dont want to go back to a non-spi boat in our dominantly ligth-wind area.

People are quoting prices from John P without actually asking him.

I do not think it is appropiate to quote prices that may not be correct.

John may or may not wish to post his proices on the forum. If you want a Carbon mast from John, you should call or email him and discuss it.

So you mean that the one originally posting this price was pooping from a hole a little bit higher than his a§§hole, seems to be a common thing here...

No, I mean that anyone quoting a price for an item which is not on the website of said supplier is peotentiall mis-representing the actual price.

I'd be very fecked off is someone said I would provide my web hosting and forum design cinsultancy for 100GBP per hour, as that is not the rate I would charge.

IF someone wants a Stealth Carbon mast, they should contact John and ask him what the price is.