It appears to me that the FX somewhat pioneered the wave-piercing bow and the one-up design. It did those things before the F16 did those things. That so?



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It is thru that the F16 is done beyond the FX one but the FX is not a pioneer at all, the wave piercing idea, what ever that may mean ( selling feature ) . The original plan of the FX is coming from A-class it is more or less a bad modified/copied A-class Flyer, done by Nils , it was around 1999 or 2000 i believe.

Just for your info,

Hans

The FX was and to me still is a nice looking Cat. I remember going to the UK Boat Show in London and seeing the FX One for the first time and I was really impressed. However, I'm really glad I never actually purchased a FX. This is because I sail on Coastal Waters (not a lake) and wanted to sail recreationally (without a safety boat). Sailing a FX single handed even in moderate to light wind conditions could still be a risky exercise due to the weight of the FX mast. As previously mentioned it belongs on an F18 not a Cat originally designed for the single handed market. Nowadays the FX's are tending to be marketed for the two up's and I'm not surprised as in my opinion they are too dangerous to be sailed single handed for the average to lighter person to sail (185-160 lbs 84-72kgs)
So please be careful and I hope your future will not be to uncompromising.

Ha !

But seems fitting somehow.





To this I would like to replay of a very long standing opinion of mine, ever since the start-up of the F16 class. I strongly feel that the F16's, FX-ones and I17R/F17's (older EU I-17 are too slow however) should just race eachother on elapsed time. There is not enough between them to make a meaningful difference in any (recreational) racing.

I hope to see more combined fleets having fun together in the future.




I have always a very hard time believing such claims. For a boat that has been sold over a 1000 times, mostly in Europe, it is still a pretty rare sight at regatta's. Not to mention ONLY 6 boats at last years Europeans. Currently the F16 class has about 150-200 boats the world over depending on how you count (Taipan 4.9 class has 300 the world over) and you sure don't see less of them at Texel etc then the FX-one's for example.


The pioneering is most A-cat related. Nils Bunkenburg and Peter Eigner tried it first on a A and then Nils copied the idea to the Hobie Fox and then the FX-one. F16 came about 2 years after the FX-one launch if I remember correctly and started without with a wave-piercer hull shape (Taipan, Stealth) and it was only later introduced to the class with the Blade. The F16 class was never about a specific design detail like that. Always about a set of general performance limiting rules to garantee level (first in wins) racing among different designs. Maybe in time the F16 designs move away from wave-piercers hulls again, we don't know.




The mainsail area and spinnaker area between both are as good as identical. The FX-one length is only 8 to 10 inches more and that is not enough to make a meaningful difference either. The measurement based systems predict slower performance due to the high ready to sail weight of the FX-one (around 150 kg) and the Portsmouth ratings are most likely influences by the lack of development in the FX-one class and the lack of top tier sailors in the class.

I wish you they best of enjoyment with your FX-one, it is not a bad boat at all !

Wouter

It is also my personal opinion that the FX-one feels better when sailed 2-up with a light to medium crew. I feel this is due to the stiff mastsection (only a little automatic depowering or power control), very long daggerboards (tripping) and the volume distribution of the hulls. The FX-one sits better in the water with about 130 kg on board and I found it to be a fast ship that way when fitted with the 4.15 sq. mtr jin (also of the F18). It felt like it had more grunt and was able to better transform it into speed then.

Wouter

That's interesting. I have wondered about the mast setup. The nice thing about being a rookie is that all technical information/opinions are more or less on equal footing until verified. Not as a matter of skepticism.

One reason I did not look at the A cat too seriously was the whole "power to platform" thing -- which is mast/sail power that is placed on the hull/crossbars. Seems almost like putting a 400 hp engine in a Volkswagen. Some want it and obviously can handle it.

The FX mast is listed at 27' 7" but appears to measure a little over 28'. However, the Blade mast is 28' also. Your comment had to do with mast weight, though. At 230 lbs and 6, I can balance (carefully) the mast with one hand. It doesn't appear all that heavy (I will weigh it.) Possibly you are talking about the mast plus the additional weight of all the accessories? It would interesting to compare the F16 total mast weight with that...

Despite the fine points, the question is still answered, I think, in that the power of the boat is at the edge for what the platform can handle. I noticed something interesting in Jeremy Evans review of the FX: That according to Gavin Colby, whom he listed as the FX's designer, the FX becomes "difficult" in 25 knot winds. No answer in the article as to why. But I deduced from the context that the boat was way overloaded.

My next thought was that maybe all big performance cat design seem to run into this problem of balancing sail to platform.



Duh on me, I can't find that mention. And the search engine fails me...

...which backs up Mark P's thought? Depowering and the problem of board tripping I have heard mentioned. Seems like depowering is where it's at. Prefer not spending all my time screaming "slow down, dammit, SLOW DOWN" ONLY, if you know what i mean.

I'd say that a boat that becomes difficult in 25 knot winds is actually quite tame. My blade is a challenge at 18 knots and scary in winds over 20 knots, and i'm definitely not a feather weight.

Yeah, Simon, I wondered if someone was going to question that quote. The point in the article was that Colby is an incredible talent and even he was admitting to troubles with a boat that he designed apparently to handle those conditions and up. My guess.

Anyway,for the responses, thanks. I am going to sail out of F16 forum now before I get harassed for talking Hobie in F16 land.

Come back to the light!!

The FXone starts getting difficult in much over 15kts. At 25kts you're in a world of trouble. I haven't sailed anything other than a bigger keel boat that wasn't though.

There are about 5 FXones in Ireland- don't race much on the open circuit, and are always left sitting by the Spitfires.

So we have located 5, now just 995 to find...

I seriously doubt there is a 1k of them out there, more like 400. Sail numbers are in the mid 500's I believe and they probably started production boats at 100, but I don't know that and I'm just taking a stab at where they started.

I'd bet there's 100 in the US, but nobody races them. I can think of about 9-10 boats that I know of. A dealer in Cali said he sold a dozen last year, but once again to nobody who races.

Being a Hobie sailor, I looked to the Hobie family when I wanted to upgrade. When I saw the FX One, I said, "now there's a cool looking performance cat." But I looked for over a year for a used one. One here and there would come on the US market, but they'd get snatched up. I actually have an easier time finding a used Blade.

I was willing to drive from Minnesota to New Jersey to get mine. Fortunatly the previous owner had some friends somewhere in between and I met him in Pennsylvania. The used ones are hard to come by, that's for sure. They seem to come in spurts, none for 6 months, then theres three for sale listed in various places.

One of the FX One owners at Datchet has tried a Stealth carbon mast on his boat with great success, seems to counter a lot of the problems such as single handers not being able to right the boat and in his opinion seems that it also makes the boat easier to sail. On changing over the masts we measured them against each other with both being almost equal length but the diamonds and spinnaker hoist position being over 400mm higher on the FX one. Weight was the telling stat, over 20 kilos against 13 but more tellingly the FX1 was nearly 10kgs at the tip against 5.5 for the Stealth. Now our scales were only bathroom scales so you could plus or minus that 1/2 kilo probably.

So anybody buying a FX1 should perhaps buy the platform from Hobie and buy a Carbon mast from Stealth marine, bet you would save a lot of money as well.