what about water balast.. some bulbs at the bottom of the centerboard fill it with water and when its sailing it doesn't add weight until the bulb lifts out of the water then it adds the extra righting momentum you need....

It doesn't matter whether or not the weight is above or below the water - you're still adding mass to the boat that the sail power has to make accelerate and overcome the additional wetted surface area drag. Weight is weight whether it's neutrally buoyant or not.

That sounds like a pretty neat idea to help PREVENT capsize. But what happens if the boat actually capsizes? Does that extra water ballast weight up on the upper hull, which is tilted over the wrong way, make it harder to right the boat? Just like if a crew member is up on the upper hull when the boat is capsized and that weight tends to push the boat over even farther?

This is a physics question, and I don't know if I am explaining or asking it right. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I cannot believe that I am late to this party!

I started a fleet of Nirvana IIs at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club last year. We now have 85 boats in the club and I will be ordering about 7 more in the next month. Here is the website I put together for our fleet: ABYC Nirvana RC Fleet

They are cheap and they sail well. Here is a video: Video of Nirvanas Sailing

What is good about the boats is that they sail amazingly well for an inexpensive boat. That was the first criteria for choosing the boat for us. The second was convenience. I think part of the success of our fleet is that the boat can be put together so quickly that it is easy to take apart and transport in most vehicles. One guy transports his in a Honda Spider, that is small.

As for the Chinese manufacturing. Everything except the electronics are great! We have people who are still on the same radio system that came stock with the boats when we bought them but...I recommend the new way of order from the distributor. That is to get the boat with the Hitec system. You can have it preinstalled for extra money but I would encourage you all get the "Kit". It does not take long to install the radio gear and it only takes about 10 minutes to take the boat out of the box the first time to set it up (sans radio installation).

If you have questions I am the Nirvana Guru...at our club anyway.

We are racing every Friday evening and getting anywhere from 8 to 20 boats. We sail in salt water, which is really bad for the boats, but rinse them off before going home. They take a fair amount of abuse considering what we put them through. No one has regretted their decision to get the boats and they all are trying to get more people to the races.

Later,
Dan

The prototype laminate schedule was two layers of 6oz fiberglass. I did this because a couple of test halves I laid up with two layers of 3oz just didn't seem rigid enough. As it turned out, once the whole thing was joined and the primary bulkhead was installed, the thing is solid as a rock - and now a little on the heavy side (the two 3oz layers would probably have been enough with a little help. There is no core as it would really just add weight and complexity unless I glassed the core with something like 1oz glass...the scale just gets too small at that point. The two hull halves weighed in at a little over 1 lb and I think I can safely get them to .75 or even .65lbs.

The next ones is going to be one layer of 5.7oz kevlar/carbon with an inside layer of 3oz s-glass. If that's not enough, I'll go to two layers of 5.7oz carbon - but that should be plenty. My only concern with the super-light schedule is oil-canning on the flat sections near the bow - I may vacuum and glass in some triangle-stock balsa stringers in that area to give it a little more rigidity.

I have one of these and love it . Hull flying up wind and wing on wing down wind speed. Im looking at making a pole and snuffer for a spin .