How does the F18 go against a F17, 1 up, when there isnt enough wind for 2 to trap on the F18 but enough for 1 to trap on the f17 which cat will be the faster?

An A-Cat

It depends which version of the F17 you are talking about

Has anyone worked what the F in F17 stands for? I'm tipping "frankenfurter"

It stands for "Fud" as it tries to convince everyone that it is something it is not.

False?

F16, why people buy F17, no idea, my completely biased opinion

Same here, and I came from the Hobie version.

My interpretation was that it was supposed to be the Inter 17, But the Americans had to be different and change the boat, then called it the F17, hence your F.
Nobody has the answer here Devon, Like the laser sailors, can't see past thier own class.........

Devon

As you've probably gathered from the responses here, this is a very difficult question to answer based on any real observation. Orphan boats like the Nacra 17 in it's various iterations aren't seen in major regattas in numbers against F18's. Nacra has made many different hull, mast and sail combinations in Europe, USA and your continent. Performance varies widely so it's hard to give an accurate view based on anything other than best guess on their general performance.
In my opinion, the weakness in the F18 performance curve is upwind in 7 to 11 knots. Below that, their large sail area and heavy weight help to maintain momentum and push through the lulls. Above that when they pop a hull and get two on the wire things start to work with less drag and the foils working as they should. So if you can pop a hull either with none or one on the wire in the 7 to 11 range you should be able to climb away to windward. Downwind would be much harder as the F18 can throw buckets of sail area at the problem and overcome any weight disadvantage. All of this assumes equal sailor skill of course.

Engineer

I know it's good to be able to blame the Seppos for all the ills of the world but in this case it's being a bit harsh. There have been different versions of the Nacra 17 in Europe and certainly in Australia of the few that have been produced over the years they have had a number of different hull, mast and sail combinations. Hardly SMOD and they don't fit a formula...................

No worries Ace, just a little frustration sneakin in..... I thought it was a fair question Devon had asked.

The origin of the class is in CRAM in the US. Home to the major 5.5uni fleet in the US... the sailors looked at the spinnaker transformation and wanted to upgrade. Nacra obliged and introduced a modfied Nacra 17 for the US. They started racing the Aussi nacra 17 hulls with a tall rig. The Nacra 17R.... (or Race). At the same time, the large n5.8NA fleet was switching to the Inter 20 and then to the F18 class. The big selling point for the new to the US market F18 class was TWO sail configurations based on teams size. Since every class wants to appeal to the most sailors possible... the 17R sailors in CRAM after a couple of years convinced Nacra that they needed two spinnaker sizes for down wind based on the helm's weight. The new class took on the name Formula 17 to reflect the weight formula. Eventually the class moved from carbon sticks to Alu sticks.

The big problem for this racing class is that the market for single handed sailors who want a spinnaker to go racing is really small. My hunch is that we don't have more then 15 or 20 F16 uni's and F17 boats racing in the US.

What is interesting is that Nacra believed that 17 feet was the sweet spot for a single hander with spin and argued that the F16 concept would prove difficult to push 16 feet down wind in breeze..... The extra foot of volume was critical in their view... After 10 years... the debate is mostly irrelevant.