The Challenge National Formula 1.04 took place at the weekend in Lorrient Brittany France. 30 teams took part and five manufacturers were represented. Mattia, Nacra, Cirrus, Hobiecat, Spitfire. The competition was close with Spitfires coming first and second in this new class. May be the Spitfire is not as dated as some of the french press believe. Will Formula 1.04 offer a challenge to F16?

As I wrote on the F16 forum where you posted approximately the same message:

This have been discussed at length earlier. The 1.04 and the F16 are two distinctly different concepts so the 1.04 is no more a threat than the F18, H16 or the 49er for that sake. We are all promoting catamaran sailing and racing, so talking about a threat is a bit strong.

Who are you by the way? A small introduction would be nice.

What is it, and how does it work? What is 1.04? Is there a web site with more information?

F104 is a disperate collection of boats that rate 1.035 to 1.045 under SCHRS.

These boats are sailed 2 up with main, Jib and Spi.

I believe there are some other rules, but the basis of the group is the rating falls between 1.035 and 1.045 on SCHRS.

CPS, who are you, where are you based?

Seems to me if F104 takes off it would destroy SCHRS as designers figure out how to exploit the formula.

Don't think so; there are also length limits on 104 as well.

I think they are more likley to destroy F104.

Yeah, in order to prevent too much tweaking they'd have to put a box rule around it as well. Otherwise people might figure out that they can get ahead by sacrificing some weight for sail area, or width or whatever the formula says is balanced but isn't in real life.

If they have a length limit, they've already started down that road. Seems better to just have a box rule from the get-go.

I guess the other way to go about it would be to require all boats in a one-design class legal configuration, and hope the manufacturers don't start doing the tweaking themselves.

Does anybody know what those SCHRS ratings would be in terms of comparable Portsmouth ratings?

IIRC, the Spitfire is PY 712

I mean, what is 1.035 in terms of a Portsmouth rating; and what is 1.045 in terms of a Portsmouth rating? Is there any valid way to equate them?

I believe the classes are based on two quite different ideals.

F104 is getting as many popular current french boats together and racing them without using the handicap system.

F16 tring to get a boat which is a fast as a f18 or A class for the price of under a f18.

It's a benerfit to cat sailing if both classes work well.

The spitfire is a competitor to both classes, even thought both claim it's in their own class, but spitfire sailors seem quite content sailing within just there own class.

When I bought my own f16, I would have gone for spitfire if it was just for the racing, f104 if i wanted a cheap second hand cat to race.

But I like the ideal of one/two hander boat,light weight, and high spec boat.(plus with it been new it was at lower price then the new f104 I was looking at.)

"I mean, what is 1.035 in terms of a Portsmouth rating; and what is 1.045 in terms of a Portsmouth rating? Is there any valid way to equate them?"

Based on 1hr you have a 36 second range for 1.035 - 1.045. Some clubs use a conversion factor from SCHRS to Portsmouth Yardstick to score with monos, but I personally am not convinced by this method. Don't forget the conversions will be to UK portsmouth yardstick. I haven't seen one for the US ratings. You could work from 104 range to the F18 rating to get an approximation against the US yardstick.

Cheshirecatman

Mary F104 is a class much like the days when you had Prinde 16's and Hobie 16's...

Nacra 5.2's and Hobie 18's.

Prindle 19's and Nacra 5.8's and Supercat 19's.

The boats were level rated in US Portsmouth and state of the art in their day.

Your mileage might vary as to how even you beleieve the boats actually are.... leading to the old "horses for courses debate".

Level rated races were never popular in the US as sailors felt the pressure to support their one design class schedule and not a level racing schedule. I would imagine that the only way it works is if the French YC's and Sailing authorities only support F104 and don't allow a local majority of boats to split off and race one design by not hosting OD races.

I understand the concept of the class. I just want to know how to relate SCHRS to Portsmouth.

I think the only boat we might have in the USA is the Hobie FX1 and it's rating is pretty soft.

The boats are slower then the F18/F16 rating band we know.

It is my view that the F104 class will have trouble growing and sustaining herself with the current very simple rule-structure of adhering to a 104 handicap number.

The F16 class didn't start out much different from that but we quickly encountered the need to converge to a more tightly controlled class in order to grow and be garanteed survival.

Basically, at this time the F104 class has less and less stringent rules then even the A-cat class and I see that as a problem.

Personally I applaud the F104 creation from the viewpoint that it is a good action to reverse the fragmentation of the catamaran sailing scene while not hurting some owner investments by declaring a given class as unviable. But I don't see it as much of a competition (c.q. challenge) to the F16 class, the A-cat class or the F18 class as these are much more organised (internationally) and much more tightly controlled then the F104.

Wouter

Oh, well, I give up. Cheshirecatman already said he has not seen a conversion factor from SCHRS for the U.S. Portsmouth ratings, so maybe there is no way to do it.

Mary, the conversion factors would vary each year as do the Portsmouth ratings, not a good thing for a conversion factor. Also you could only do a conversion for those cats that hasve a rating in both tables. You'll probably find two cats with almost the same SCHRS rating but different Portsmouth numbers, which is not desireable either. But, you probably could find a reasonable Portmouth range which would encompass similar cat types as the ones in 104.

Thank you.

If I'm correct, Portsmouth takes the resulst of cats into account. So you have a theoretical rating, adjusted with actual racing results.
SCHRS is purely theoretical.

In fact a comparison between the ratings Portsmouth and SCHRS could reveal if formula class cats perform more or less within the same range on the water, while boats gathered by rating would have to have a bigger difference?
Correct?

Gill