Man, I can't believe I have to give you time: A class 64.5/F16 63.0. That sucks!

WOW! welcome to maybe 10 months ago.

Some of us are slower than others.

Well seeing how it was your class that was affected I assumed you would be all over it. I guess you do not pay attention to those things?

I only looked at F16/F18, which I think is about right. But, that seems like a lot between the A class & F16. Anyway, Jake understands this stuff a lot better than I and since it's kind of a slow day I thought I'd bust his hump a little.

He must be working.

LOL actually it was March 2008 the table even has teh F16 rating highlighted to denote the change.
http://www.ussailing.org/Portsmouth/tables08/tables08mh.asp

I'm pretty sure, the F-16 number was modified in September 08

That isn't the question.

Had we used the right numbers at the time for our qualifier I would be qualified for the Alter Cup! We didn't realize they had changed...so don't start with me on those ratings.

But seriously...I've raced Nigel and Tammy Pitt and Ollie and Joanna on F16's and a couple of other A-cats at the same time on a couple of occasions. The advantages / disadvantages change dramatically with differences in wind strength. In most conditions, I can go to weather better - as would be expected. However, and especially in the light stuff, the spinnaker on the F16 makes up any upwind advantage the a-cat had. As the wind increases (8 to 10) we start finishing in closer proximity but that spinnaker is still hard to beat with a main only (but I also didn't know how to wild thing properly back then either). I haven't raced F16s under the new numbers yet.

Perhaps many of you don't remember Wouter lobbying to get the F16 number lower. Guess he thought that would attract more sailors as it led one to believe the boat was super fast. It was not.
It started out around 66 to 67 which wasn't too bad. Even so,you struggled to get in the top 3. Now the number is ridiculously low and no one is going to sail to that number.
Seems the F16s wanted to sail with the F18s at Tradewinds to show how fast they were.., and were not even close.
Sailed at its best, I believe the F16 should be no lower than a 65. I am talking the uni version, of course. Never raced it as a sloop, but still can't see it being much faster.
Rick

Rubbish. Put Robbie Daniel on a F16 (excluding the Taipan) and nobody will touch him! Your statement only holds water if you consider Matt and Robbie sailing equals.

Great idea, Ding.

When do we schedule this cage match?

Rick, I remember that quite well and agree with it. What I didn't notice was the A class number.

So here we have it: The F16 has it's vaunted 1-up/2-up capabilty; weighs a lot less than the F18, making it easier to move around the beach and it's almost as fast. It's faster than an A Cat and costs much less.

Did I miss something?

To make the comparison then, put Robbie on both boats. Or put Randy on the F18 and Robbie on the F16. Then you would develop the perfect DPN relative number to each other. Not to other boats, however.
Rick

Rick, don't confuse me! I'm trying to tout the F16 and rag on Jake at the same time.

I'm trying to come up with a "manly man" line about about one-arming a spinnaker.

Sorry, Pete, didn't mean to ruin your game plan. Let me help rag on Jake, as well.

Come on Rick

The PN Ratings assume that you have a viable One design Class where the boat is optimized by the top sailors in the class. That has not happened in the US F16 class... They have a class schedule with one or two events... sort of. The underlying assumption which is a bit of a quality control for the PN Ratings simply does not exist for the F16 Class Rating.

Secondly, Portsmouth assumes that the top sailors in the three to 5 racing classes are comparable and that racing between classes generates data which is more or less sailor independent. (You also need an actual race with this level of sailor competing.... a whole other problem/limitation)

A quick check of the sailors tells you that ain't so for the F16
A class, Lars Guck and Pete Melvin... (among the tops in the world)

F18 class, the only nationwide spinnaker racing class in the USA and Canada and the older N20 Class have sailors who have won past national or Alter cup Titles.

Nacra F17 class... Bob Curry leads a strong group of Michigan sailors who have raced at the national level on this and other boats for years. Curry has several NA championships on his resume.

F16 class.... ah no!

Fact of the matter... the accurate F16 rating is darn close to the F18 rating in the EU and Australia.... Wouter was correct years and years ago and the evidence is in the current ratings in the EU and Australia.

Your conclusions based on the tradewinds results are off for these reasons.

The changes in the US Sailing scene are a major reason for moving to a measurement rating system (ISAF or Texel). It's on the agenda for the USSA Multihull Council Meeting.

Neither Mike Krantz / David Lennard or Nigel Pitt and, usually, Tammy could come close to beating a well sailed F16 on the old numbers....and on a very regular basis. I definitely do NOT want to take away from the F16 sailors in our area - they are definitely great sailors but we watch them regularly win against guys who continue to do well (and/or win) national championships in some hotly contested classes and events.

Galactic Challenge?

Rick I have to c all BS on this.

We requested to sail with the 18's at Tradewinds to have more boats to sail with. If it was not late and the order already established it would have prefered to race all the spin boats together. (there were many of those F18 guys we asked after the event that commented the same, they wished it was all spin boats together.)

There is a wide range of skill levels in all the classes. I definitely do not want to make this post into yet another rating debate as that is pretty tired now. Robbie walked away from us the last 2 times I raced him 16 to 18. That has nothing to do with a perf rating. We want to race to gether becuase the boats are close enough that one is not going to mess up the other due to the boat (The drivers on the other hand :)- but that does not mean the better driver is on the bigger boat)

Also to jog your memory, we ended up 3rd across the line in all the races we finished. Ben and Lindsey were very close to us as well, so commenting that the f16's were not even close is a bit of an unfair statement.

Matt