Did some more sailing on my own boat lately.

WOW !!!!

What a rig !

I really REALLY like the AHPC superwing rig. I knew something about from sailing on Geerts Taipan 4.9 and Bills Taipan 4.9 in the past. But after the clinic by Daniel van Kerckhof and some lenghty talks with Greg Goodall near the (DCC) westland cup campfire I'm tapping into new experiences.

This rig is different than all the rigs I sailed before, including the 49-er rig. The rig just react so beautifully to adjustments and trimming. The resulting accelerations are just orgasmic. Out of trim ? Pull in some sheet or control line and she reacts like you hit the G-spot head on. This rig talks and lets you know what she like and what she doesn't like, immediately without excess comments, and she rewards the right trim actions. If only all were like this, hey !? I love it, I love it completely.

Love my boat. Been sailing last with 85 + 72 = 157 on board and my boat got the raised beam. Swell + chop; Huge swell later on, some 9 miles out of the shore. She takes on the waves beautifully. She sinks in like a proper suspension and than pops right out. The raised beam staying clear of the tops. I'm really impressed by her wave handling capabilities. Pulled in some more mainsheet and downhaul with a bit more downhaul and she went even faster in the stronger winds that were out there. She felt stabil but was lifting the hull a bit to much from gust to gust so we gave it a bit less rotation making the top of the mast fall off a bit and WOW. She lay solid on the water but now going at topspeed continiously. Beautiful , just beautyful.

Short hulled boat ? What ever man ! She just felt so much better than anything else. Overtook a few boats through their lee. Didn't have her dive on us once in these conditions; swell, chop and 14 - 22 knots of wind. Wow, Wow, Wow !

Good balanced helm as well. Nice and mild on upwind and very balanced under spi. I'm using only a 3250 mm pole instead of the 3500 mm as allowed and that works perfectly. I did keep the excess 250 mm of pole protruding past the block and used it to fit my wind vane to it.

I'm never going to own anything else than Formula 16's or comparable and properly designed lightweights boats again with the exception of Formula 18's that share a similar superwing rig. Currently that seems to be the Capricorn F18.

But the F16 really is the boat for me. For years and years to come.

You know, this may sound arrogant, but I lost me taste for discussion other boat types. One Australian friend of mine regulary uses the phrase "design/class ... just doesn't interest me" when refering to non-entlightend classes or designs. I now understand why and he is right. Any boat coming out with a teardrop mast crosssection will never interest me again; that is all so ancient history ! Any singlehander weight more than 125 kg's = still in the dark ages. There is absolutely NO NEED to be that heavy. Lightweight fragile ? They wish !!!!!

I still have some fine tuning to do on my boat so that absolutely everything snaps on or ties on quickly and easily but when that has been done and when I have the trim of my selftacker just right than my boat is going to be some nice boat.

And I hear the same comments from other F16 sailors, Taipan and Stealth, as well. If the Blade is at least as good then were on the brink of something very exiting here.

I think some of our competitors have noticed as well when looking at their new PR activities.

Fair winds and have fun with your F16's.

They are the best

Wouter

(After a good day of sailing and learning about the rig)

I cant wait to get my hands on my very own F16. Im still in the early fases of learning. Currently on a H16. I know ancient, but it will only carve the path for something better.

You got any pictures of your RIG? I would love to see it.
Awesome post!

Robi,

Hobie 16 ? Cool man ! Great to learn the basics and work on your boathandling and tactical race skills. When you got that done after a few seasons of sailing then your still early enough to upgrade to an F16.

Seriously you need to build a foundation first before attempting to build towards the sky. I did my basis on a Prindle 16 and I never regret it nor will I ever regret it. The F16 revitilized my enjoyment in catsailing to the level that I had when I first sailed my own old second hand prindle 16 in a blow. After I laid the foundation on that boat I could switch to the new level. That is the route and that is the most cost/time effective route.

I cant wait to get my hands on my very own F16. Im still in the early fases of learning. Currently on a H16. I know ancient, but it will only carve the path for something better.

>>You got any pictures of your RIG? I would love to see it.

I have not, sorry. I've been sailing your see. I may be able to lend a camera sometimes in the future. I will try.

On the other hand. There is not that much to see. Downhaul is completely inside the mast and the mast looks like a mast. The real differences you only see when you move your hand over the mast and see the rig work during sailing. And especially feel the differences in speed when you're adjusting the trim.

Today again went out again with a friend and he kept saying each time we found another level of speed. "man, who switched on the outboard motor ?". We thought we were going fast and then suddenly we trimmed ourselfs into another level of speed. At times it was difficult to keep the groove for more than a few minutes but then again we were distance sailing and than you get small changes in currents and wind(direction) which put you out of perfect trim. But often we found our groove after some playing with the controls. A few times we didn;t and then we found that a line had looped itself around the daggerboard. We cleared that and off she went. At these speeds any line in the water pulls on the boat enormously. A few times I see a small loop bounce in to the water only to see the entire line rapidly being pulled overboard within no time. It is definately a low drag design but man a great rig when you start to understand how it works.

The platform felt really stabil to me. She stayed level on the waterline and hardly put her noose down. And even when we slammed into the next wave we felt a mild thumb through the boat only to feel her accellerate away a second later when the beam cleared the wave.

At another time under spinnaker we punched full speed into the wave ahead, layed the mainbeam on the water over the full length and decellerated rapidly. Like somebody pulled on the emergency break. However rapid the decelleration was it was more like pronounced pull and a jolt. Very manageable. She stayed level with only a small bow down attitude because we were riding down a wave. Moments later the beam was lifted clear of the water and away we went, on topspeed within 2 or 3 seconds. It was some day.

Regards,

Wouter

Sounds sweet and exciting.

I posted photos of my cat a few days ago.
http://www.catsailor.com/forums/sho...ew=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

I will get new photos with the decals on, and the sail up.

Hi Wouter,
this post is driving me mad , you remind me of how I felt last season just couldn't get to much sailing. Like seeing sailing from a whole different side after 37 years. As exciting as when I first started sailboarding. Can't wait to get my new F16 in the water it's still probably 6 weeks away. I will have to live of your excitment till then.
Go for it.
Gary.

Wouter,

Any experience 1-up with spin?

Mark.

Sadly not yes,

We had storm after storm lately. This is an awfull summer overhere. It turns out that we were lucky at the DCC event. Any earlier or later would have seriously screwed up the event.

I did get some more doublehanded sailing in but not singlehanded with spi sorry. Only Tony Jenkins and Phill Brander have sailed my boat (race it even) like that. If you have questions about it maybe you should try and ask them as I have no idea how many chances I get in the following weeks till the end of our season.

Today windforce 7 with gusts. Not the conditions to give it a shot.

Wouter

Phill or Tony could comment on sailing Wouter's boat 1 up with spin, I only got to see it from Geert's Taipan. Seemed to be going pretty darn good to me!
I would like to tell you all about a little experiment I did this weekend on my Taipan 4.9.
I sail my boat out of my club and have to keep it on a trailer. Unless I take the spi pole on/off everytime I launch it I can't use the spi (which I have sailed 1 up and it's a blast except for the launching/dousing issues which with a snuffer are manageable). I was involved in a couple of the Worrell races and remember some of the "old" days of fooling around with spis on cats. Anyway, I decided to take my Goodall 17sqm spi and see if I could rig it up without a pole. I put a small bullet block w/ becket tied through the bow "hole" (where pole stabilizing line normally goes through) on one bow and then deadended a line to the other bow "hole". This "tack" line then runs through the bullet block on the other hull and is tied off on the becket with a small bullet block "trapped" between the becket and block at the end of the bow. This bullet block had a line running from it to a cleat on the forward beam. Another bullet block was "trapped" on the "tack" line between the line end tied off on the one hull and the block tied to the other hull. This block was shackled to the tack of my spi. You're probably starting to see where this is going-
I laced an old tennis racket to the bow bridle as a sort of "snuffer" ala the F18HT's and ran all the lines and sheets through it. I used autoratchet blocks at the rearmost end of my jib track (my Taipan is an "old" - 1997 - model that had the 4-way type jib block arrangement) for spi blocks. I didn't want to chop up my Guck snuffer yet so I just put a bag on the tramp for now and ran the snuffer line through a block at the rear of the tramp and then up through tennis racket to spi. So "snuffing" was really just gathering at the bag and stuffing in but I'm still in the experimental stages. When the spi is "snuffed" the line through the cleat at the front beam is released and the block with spi tack reaches back to the bag. Very quick to deploy tack because it is 1:2 purchase. The tack of the spi is allowed to "jibe" to the leeward hull via the block on the tack line so you can actually sheet inside the tack point! Also tends to cant the spi to windward and puts most of tension on leeward hull. Anyway, it launched easily and snuffed fairly easily too (although not fast since I had to hand stuff in bag) and I couldn't believe it but the sheeting angle seemed pretty darn good!
With this setup I could sail quite high even though I could not fully hoist the spi to the gate on the mast (luff distance was GREATER than with the pole!! ) so it tended to sort of want to collapse. Wind was fairly light, maybe 5-10 mph but it sailed quite well and windage upwind (which I DO have a lot of experience with using my pole and midmounted Guck snuffer and IS an issue) was only nominally worse than with uni only setup!
Anyway, I am continuing to pursue this and did take some pictures (in the parking lot) but can't post from here so you will have to wait to see.

Kirt Simmons
Taipan USA 159

Looks like you may have started something .....
Keep us posted as to how it goes in varying conditions, maybe even in a race if possible. If it has advantages, it sounds like a good setup.
Please post the pics when you get a chance, I struggle to imagine how a setup works based on a written description (sounds way more complicated than a spin. pole setup, which I`m sure it isn`t !)

Cheers
Steve

Hopefully I can attach a picture of the overall setup (sorry boat is on the trailer!)-

Kirt

Here's another one of the tennis racket-

Kirt

Here's one of the block system I used-

Kirt

Here's one of the tack at the starboard bow with the bullet block with becket tied to the hull hole.

Kirt

The Shadow uses a similar system - see http://www.swell-catamarans.com/frshadow.html
I think that the bag is under the tramp.