Fair enough Wouter. I hope your right.

I heard from a reliable source that there Is going to be a more affordable PBO rigging option being released in the very near future. This could be good as well . It will still be more expensive than stainless wire tho.

Thanks Aido,

Lets leave it at that.

With respect to PBO

Where I am stainless steel rigging is CHEAP ! So stuff like PBO will remain "more expensive" a whole lot longer I'm afraid.

However, "more expensive" does not necessarily equate to "expensive", right ?

Fair winds to you !

Wouter

You should be thanking macca for breathing some life into this forum. And I look forward to hearing about more f16s taking on f18 s and coming out on top. It's getting quite boring here in australia they win all the mixed regattas.

The thing that attracts me to rope rigging instead of stainless, is that it doesn't kink. I think I'm going to try making new sidestays for my boat using rope.



Should've been an F16.


What about billet aluminum? Machine it out of a solid chunk?

Rope is great. Just when packing up found best to do each stay or trapeze separately as the knots can be really annoying to undo when you have 2 or 3 or more lines all tangled together.

I think I'd bungee them to the bottom of the mast and leave them on the mast. Right now I strip the forestay, and sidestays off the boat for trailering. I don't like how they rub on the mast, or the tramp when going down the road, but I leave my rope trap lines on and secure them this way.

I would suggest 4 at a minumum.. in no order.. Blade, Falcon Stealth & Viper and Im guessing with a good crew dont dismiss the Tiapan.. Watch the space more to come I suspect..

All does look good for the class... If we dont fukc it up with rule changes..

An 80 kg F16 double handed is not possible at this moment, it will be not strong enough even in full carbon.
The loads on A-class are far more different than on a 2 man boat.

Hans

The stocks are from the Hobie

Yes - you could eat your breakfast off the inside of our hulls. These hulls are built by a professional, experienced shipwright - not $2/hr labour where quality control does not really exist.

Wouter - Aus 405 weighed 105.5kgs cat rigged ready to sail.. Only carbon is in the foils

Correct, as seen on their iCat.

I now had some time to dig up a pic of the F16 version my huge database of pictures.

The sterns are undoubtably of a VWM Blade F16

Wouter

Karl,




See my post above. I was too lazy yesterday to look for a pic with the F16 version of these stocks.




In short, too heavy and too expensive. Lots of alu waste and owning such a CNC machine costs too. The square tubes come standard and all that is needed is a less expensive bending machine. There is no waste and the tubes are hollow which makes them both strong, stiff and lightweight. I think catamaranparts is welding them and that is a skill, but I've personally made 3D alu objects using aluminium glue and (monel) rivets and that seems to work very well too.

The rivets (or bolts) prevent the glue from being broken by a force splitting/leveraging the components apart, while glue handles all shear force and takes care of all play. If the contact surface is large enough then the glue can handle quite alot of "pulling apart" force as well. It can hold 160 kg per square cm. and that translats to 2279 lbs/sq inch.

My Australian friends told me that home builders used to make such stocks by hand over a hand made timber jig. I think one pours sand in the tube to prevent it from collapsing and just slowly bend it around a curved shape. One that is adjusted for the elastic spring-back.

Wouter

Yes it does.

The 2 biggest selling points in the f16 class are weight and versatility. Jacking the boat weight does nothing for the growth of the class.

If weight is that important to the Viper owners, then let Greg know. If buyers stop purchasing or push enough, he will build to minimum. His only motive to build as he does now is so he can have 2 models using similar parts, and have cheap Asian builders doing the dirty work. Soon as sales dropped on the Cap - hey we have a new design on the water.

As far as a split to 1 design, there is a long way to go till they have numbers. The Tiger pulled it off for a while, but they had many times more boats and even that has died as the formula concept became stronger and more accepted. Look at the Unicorn in the A class, same deal. yes there were more Vipers at the GC, but those were pre-sold Alter cup boats that the owners had to bring back for that event. Not too many were sailed by their owners. None of the chartered Viper teams is a regular F16 campainer, (Except maybe Brett) There are roughly 60 Blades, 10 Falcons and 20 some Taipans sailing in the US. Pulling a 1 design on a regular basis for the 13 or so Vipers is tough go. Yes France has a lot a cat sailing, but that is not 1 design either. There is a drive for 104, but no one can agree what the rules should be as each manufacturer is trying to make it fit theirs, so it doesnt even exist in form yet. It may or may not ever take off in France, and no where outside of there have I ever read anything about anyone taking up that torch.

The F16 class is a semi-developmental class. There are 3 builders capable of making min or near min weight boats now. 1 builder for economic reasons has elected to show no inovation, even to the point of properly sizing foils, so now there are a few vocal individuals who want to force the class rules to fit them - I do not understand the logic. The Viper is a nice boat and as proved, given the right drivers, weight is somewhat secondary.

So why the push to F-up the class?

What do you mean that no one can agree what te rules can be for 104. Its simple the boat must rate 104. Doesn't get simpler than that.

The F16 that is the long lost topic of this thread was racing as a 104. So although the boat is class compliant f16, its really a victory for the C104. Let me assure you that is does exist. I can see a split down these lines occuring in Euroland very easily. Anyway we can "hopefully" remain ignorant to it and it may go away.

IMO changing the class wieght should have been done when we were talking about it the first time. Its too late now. Just for my own intrest i would like to see the wieghts of the boats at the global challenege published so we have something to aim for.

I'm not trying to sturr the pot, but I was there at the GC and have some ideas of the boats weighed...

The only boats that I can remember that made the minimum was the Taipan and the Blades....

All other boats were a little over, while the Falcons being closer to the min than the Vipers....

My boat weighed right at 129kgs...Viper 132.

In my opinion...

I think the minimum weight should be left alone...As you can see I have one of the heavier boats and I don't care how much the boats weigh, of course that's within limits here.

The box rule is there and this is a semi development class, more so than the F18, but not quite the A-class...

Now, if it starts to turn out like the A-class where something becomes astronomically expensive or something new that makes the boat a whole shitload faster, then maybe we need to rethink the rules. But, even the A-class hasn't made any astronimical strides in the last few years. Hec, even the banana boards haven't made the "older" boats obsolete. Hell, you can get a good A-class that's a few years old, throw a new sail on it, and be competitive....


I was the only singlehander Viper there and I was slow...So tell me, is it the heavy boat or the skipper?

I might just sell my boat and get an older Taipan so I can be faster on the course, cause it's lighter......I should be in the front of the pack, right? cause it's lighter? Right?

Or maybe, just maybe, it's the skipper?





Mike

In that case hop over to this thread

http://www.catsailor.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=197034#Post197034

Wouter

I suspect if Jim Boyer was building the Viper then she would be far lighter..

For a singlehander I have to agree as the Viper is a just a MUCH bigger/ heavier boat then the Taipan. Also those dagger boards are always getting in the way (as evident) but this is not an issue with the Taipan.