Well, we have a difference in wall thickness here it should be around 1,6mm and we have two spars here (in fact three the damaged one is the same) at 1,85mm and there must be some more of those on the market, don’t know how many spars coming out of a batch.

Gday Phill

Saw the Blades at Portland. Very Nice.

I bought the section from Darren Peters in Adelaide, you may know of him, he advertised it as the original cat rig section and bought it as a spare, when he sailed Taipans, from my understanding he too built good hulls and was up near the top of the list, thats all the info I have.

When I bought the hound fitting from AHPC, it took me a while to reform it to my mast section.

Regards

Maybe but its Greg's decision what info is released on his business.. We must respect that... <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

If I understood the posts of phill and mattaipan right the profile of the AHPC Superwing is 150x62mm. Can somebody confirm that please?

I have not been reading this whole thread but why would you want to be able to right your boat in any condition? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
IMHO if you go over in anything under 10-15kts maybe you should consider staying on the beach or something <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />
And if you want 100% certainty that you can right in any conditions maybe you should have spent some more cash and bought the light carbon mast instead. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

From F16 class rules:

1.9 Minimum weight of the crew

1.9.1 There will be no other restrictions on crew weight apart from the requirement that the crew weight must be sufficient to right the boat unaided under all encountered sailing conditions.

So boat should be rightable in light/no wind or rules are violated intentionally (in my case).

Aren't you taking things a little to literally?
Just take one of these ultra light weight "righting devices" with you and you will be able to right in any condition:

No Valtteri,

The rules only stipulate that each F16 boat must be fitted with a righting system that allows the crew sailing the boat in a sanctioned F16 event to right it in all conditions unaided.

You are constantly refusing to look at the righting alternatives. Which are righting poles , righting bags, shroud extenders, Gary's solo right system and several other setups.

A righting bag is the most simple and cheap alternative that will work for very lightweight solo crews on the F16. That system alone has several different setups.

The use of the single righting line is only one way to right a boat. One that will actually work for your 75 kg for winds above what ? 10 knots. So you only need to use an alternative system like the bag for the times you flip the boat in light winds days ?

I think you have a point where the mast is heavier then it really should be, and we are working on that, but for the remainer, aren't you a little bit over critical ?

Wouter

I can although I measure 150 by 62.5 mm

I think AHPC quotes it as 150x63 mm

Wouter

Thanks, just don't want to mix the things up

I know that in the past there have been two different mast weights on the Taipan, although AHPC has been selling only the (heavier) Superwing mast for the last 10 years as far as I can determine. That is for both singlehander and double hander versions of the Taipan !

It is ONLY this Superwing mast that we have a F16 class usage agreement for. The lighter mast was never included in the deal for two reasons :

-1- At the time of F16 class creation this singlehander mast was not longer supported by AHPC itself. They had no stock of them and no intention of reproducing them.

-2- The lighter 1-up mast for the Taipan looked already to weak on paper to take the F16 rig with the spinnaker. At the time we were even a little uneasy about the Taipan standard (sloop rigged)mast holding up.


The lighter Taipan 1-up must was never seriously considered for the F16's and I have really no dependable data on it. As a result I can not have mixed up these two weights as I don't know the Taipan 1-up mast weight to begin with.

Wouter

Gato,

There seems to be some movement on this front.

I for one am really hoping that we can somehow organise a new alu F16 mast design that is down to specs. Because every analysis is showing that 14.5 kg for the BARE tube is really possible. Even it is redesigned to have a little more stiffness side to side.

Thus making the bare alu tube only 4.0 kg heavier then the F16 compliant bare carbon tube. As the older Superwing masts for sloop boats indeed were.

Lets keep our fingers crossed everybody !

Wouter

P.S. Everybody is noticing the "BARE" qualifier in the statements made above ?

Fully rigged masts will come out at higher weights although the difference between alu and carbon won't change as the same fitting are used on both masts !

Gato, Valteri, etc.

Please contact the builders and suppliers for information as all will be more than happy to discuss history, options, prices or whatever else you may want to know.
Forums are great places for misinformation (given with the best intentions usually though)

A die will vary with age, but there has been nowhere near enough masts built out of the AHPC dies for this to happen. Extrusions will however, very from lot to lot. The current extruder of these sections was choosen due to their relatively tight QC. The last batch of mast we recieved was just slightly lighter than the previous batches, but still within the QC range specified. Bends can vary also due to variences in the material properties, but this is much less likely. Note: carbon can also vary significantly. Non-spec materials are cheaper but we have gotten in some batches of material with significant variances in the areal weight. Process variances can also change the weight of each piece.

I am 68 kg and can right my boat by myself with out any aids in about 10knots or more of wind. I try not to go over in less, but carry a small trash bag just in case.

Note the Tornados have some acess to their boat statistics. These are from the class submitted measurers certificates. Keep in mind that these are extremely expensive platforms that the owners then have to pay to get certified. As we get certs on boats these could get published through the class but right now this information does not exist in a reliable format, so please be patient.

I don’t know exactly what to think, just had a phone call from Valtteri and it seems we have a spar with a profile of 145x61 with a wall thickness of 1,85mm. what spar is that? If the answer is “just a teardrop away” (Shrek II) for somebody please give the answer.

I can't identify it. Not a section that I recognize.



Some additional info on my mast (2003)

I took cut-off I have of my own mast (2003) and that of another (halveway 1990's and now partly my mainbeam) to digital scales at the food section of my supermarket, these are annually calibrated by the national authority. The cut-offs are about a meter long so it is decent measurement. And I took the average of the readout on different scales.



Results after multiplying to full length :

My mast (2003) = 14.332 kg / 8.5 mtr
Used older mast (halveway 1990's) = 14.930 kg / 8.5 mtr.

Accuracy should be within a 100 grams amplitude around this average (< 1.5%)

On average the weight 1.721 grams/mtr = 14.631 kg / 8.5 mtr and that is consistant with other mast measurements that were send to me over time with the exception of course of the masts currently in Finland.

My mathematical model of the mast (developped in 2002) gives 14.229 kg/mtr = 1.674 kg/mtr. and is therefor consistant (meaning < 5% offset) with the cut-offs that I have at home.

Of course these measurements are for the bare mast tube sections, no fittings whatsoever.

Wouter

Gato posted those measurements based on the damaged mast the other two that we have here are 150x63, they all seem to have 1.85 wall thickness though. The damaged section also seems to weight more but it has not been on totally dry conditions so I can't say if that is caused by it.

okay,

Lets echo this info to "the background" for a while and see what comes up.

Wouter

It’s quiet. If we considered your weights Wouter I have the feeling that the final spar would be something around 18kg. There is a lot of SS details on the mast and they are heavy. It’s stupid that the damaged mast seems to be of a different profile; otherwise it would have been easy to strip it and put it on the scale. I could do it with the Sydväst mast but for the moment I don’t find it necessary. Still it would be interesting to know what profile the damaged one is and why two different profiles on two spars shipped together.

Yes of course. I have all these things in excel sheets somewhere but from the top of my head a typical lean fitting out of the mast adds between 2.5 and 3.0 kg in total and adds about 0.8 kg to the tipweight. Of course this does dependent on the fittings chosen and also very much on the density of the foam blocks to seal the mast. A set of carbon spreaders arms is just significantly lighter then a set of proctor spreader arms. Fittings do include items like halyards and blocks.

I think a mast fully fitted but without side-stays and forestay should be around 18 kg when it is fitted out in a lean manner.

I seem to remember that the Tornado full carbon mast was 15 kg when fully rigged and that mast is only 0.5 mtr taller.

A compliant F16 carbon mast will be just under 14 kg.

Again, the differences in weight between carbon and alu only come from the bare tubes as all the fittings are pretty much identical. That is the reason why we are looking at bare tube weights and not full mast weights (except tipweight as those are implicetly fully fitted mast measurements)

What are fully fitted A-cat carbon masts these days ? Around 10 kg ?

The old alu A-cats masts were slightly lighter then the superwing alu, but not by much. Actually there are some A-cat alu mast designs that were actually heavier then the superwing.

Formula 18 masts are on 3.5 kg to 4.5 kg heavier then the F16 alu sticks so on average 22 kg when fully fitted. These masts are only 0.5 mtr longer and carry only 13% more sail area.

I seem to remember the old Alu Tornado masts to be heavier still (then the F18's), somewhere around 24 kg. Rolf will know that info from his head. I have it archieved somewhere but no time to dig for it.

Masts without diamond wires like the Hobie 16 are typically noticeably heavier then the masts with diamond wires. They need thicker walls to withstand the bending loads. This is why small boats like the Hobie 16 and Prindle 16 (but not nacra 500) are more difficult to right singlehandedly then you would initially expect even when their masts are shorter and their rigs are smaller.


Now you've got the full picture.




That is something that interests me as well, if such a thing occured. It is however outside of my sphere of influence. You will have to contact your supplier directly for that.

Could it be that he mistakenly grapped an old alu A-cat mast ? I mean the difference between a 150x63x1.6 and 145x61x1.85 mast is not easy to spot when not laying a tape measurer over the section.


Wouter

We have a much clearer picture after Valtteri has been spending his night digging. There are still some questions that remain unclear, among them the wall thickness. But be patient, we strip the spar, cut it to small pieces and x-ray it if necessary. Guess there will be some news before tonight, but we are walking shaky ground now.
Btw. not easy to spot but when you put the fittings from another spar...