Robi, did the Blade make it to the Gulfport A cat/F16 Uni regatta? Results? Thanks. Tim...stuck in Atlanta for 6 days of training and the weather is COLD!! (for a Florida boy)

There is a blade in Gulport, but its not me. Matt did make it out there.

Lets standbye for some reports. As of right now, I am fidling with mine. Trying to learn the setup. I will take plenty of photos and post a new thread.

So, you have yours and Matt has his. You should have gone to Gulfport and had Matt set it up with you, then sail it in the regatta. I hope all goes well. Is there any wind in Gulfport today?

Yeah man congratulations.

I must say I envy you. I was quite happy with my Taipan F16 till from Aussie designed teh Blade and some Yank decided to build in glass-vinylester.

The best of luck Robi and I wish you a splendid first season.

Wouter

The Gulprt guys are still at breakfast on the very first day of racing and you are already asking for results !

One could get the impression that you are itching for one !

Wouter

There is one Blade and four Taipan 4.9's sailing F16HP here at Gulfport. The winds Saturday have been up and down and all around making it difficult to compare the performance of the two boats. Matt on the Blade seems to have better upwind performance but is a little slower downwind. Rick White is here sailing with a roller furling screacher instead of a spinnaker and is hanging in there on the down legs. Seth Stern's boat has a leak in it and was taking on water so he had to retire after the first race. He has made temporary repairs and is hoping to be out again on Sunday. The wind has primarily been from the north all day, which is an usual direction in Boca Ciega bay. The problem has been oscillating wind due to the weather mark's position behind a condo and the wind wanting to turn to the east because of the prevailing winds and to the west due to the sea breeze. There have been massive holes and erratic winds and the only successful approach to the weather mark is on the port tack layline.

Hopefully, Sunday's winds will be from a different direction making for a better course. I'll let you know the outcome when I get back later today. For now, I'm off to the races.

Jennifer Lindsay
Taipan 4.9 #262

Here are Saturday's results, after four races and with one throwout:

Jennifer Lindsay, 3 points
Matt MacDonald, 7 points
Rick White, 8 points
Chuck Harnden, 9 points
Seth Stern, 18 points (As Jennifer said in the preceding post, Seth had a leaking hull and dropped out after the first race)

Thanks Mary, I just got home from Atlanta an hour ago. I got the Catsailor mag you sent and I will fwd. it to SW tomorrow. Any more results from today? See ya. Tim

I WISH I had results. I think the finals were Jennifer Lindsay 1st, Matt MacDonald 2nd, and Rick White 3rd.

Jennifer tried to post something about the racing today, but it did not come through. She said she will try again.

Rick can't tell me much because his cell phone is almost dead and he doesn't have a charger and he is stuck in Ft. Myers for the night because he blew out a tire on the motorhome coming home on I75.

It appears that this weather was kinda up Jennifers ally. Light and unpredictable weather on her home pond.

I remember that the rumour at the 2002 Taipan nationals was that when the weather was light you had to prepare yourself to following Jennifer around the course.

I'm looking forward to the report.

Wouter

The wind Sunday was considerably more stable than what we saw Saturday. The breeze was around 8 mph out of the east at the 10 am start with it topping off to around 12 mph by the last race. In these winds, the Blade and Taipan 4.9 are closely matched although the Blade may have a slight advantage upwind as it seems to point a bit higher than the Taipan. Some of this difference may be attributed to the differences in the sails being used. The sail I was using is a cat rig Taipan 4.9 mainsail that is cut for my weight while Matt was using a F16HP sloop main that is slightly larger than the Taipan main. It was hard to make a performance comparison of the boats downwind as Matt has not got his boat dialed in yet at that point of sail.

Chuck didn’t race today as he had to head home after sailing yesterday due to family obligations.

Seth may it out to the race course today but had to retire again due to the leak in the hull. Yesterday he soaped the boat down trying to find the leak and was only able to see that the crossbeam bolts were leaking. He sealed those yesterday and hoped that the leak was fixed. He made it back to the beach after the first race today and pulled the boat out of the water where upon inspection, he found water leak from a small crack in the bottom of the hull forward of the daggerboard trunk. Now that he knows where the leak is, he should be able to get it fixed.

Rick was probably hoping for more wind today as the screacher did not appear to perform as well as it had yesterday in the stronger breeze. Rick was saying that the screacher he has is a little undersize and that if it were made to the maximum class limit, there might be comparable performance with it and the spinnakers. The screacher certainly appears to be easier to deploy and retrieve compared to the spinnaker snuffer system.

All the A-Cat and F16HP sailors had a great time this weekend. I would like to thank Gulfport Yacht Club and its members for hosting the regatta. Hopefully they will do it again for us next year. By then, we may have a sizeable F16HP fleet here in Florida if the popularity of the Blade continues to grow.

Jennifer Lindsay
Taipan 4.9 #262

Had a really great time at the Gulfport regata this weekend. They put on an excellent event, good racing, good food and good people. I would like to thank them for inviting the F16s to the A cat event, I feel it worked out well for everyone.

This was my first opportunity to have the Blade head to head with the Taipans, and my first opportunity to sail the boat uni. It also was the first time I have ever raced uni. With the boat set up like it was I felt that I had a slight advantage goint to weather in most of the conditions we encountered. I, however, got schooled going down wind. By the last race on Sunday I was doing much better and not loosing quite so much ground (until I fell off the boat). Jennifer really makes that boat go fast. Hopefully the next race we can get everyone out there for the whole thing.

The Blade platform does very well in the uni configuration. The boat is still balanced very well with out have to really change anything. I personally still prefer to sail with a crew. On Saturday the conditions were very variable, and it was difficult to impossible to keep optimum sail trim. The extra set of hands to run the down haul, traveler, fetch the loose sheet or re-attach what ever just came loose would have been very nice. (plus a little more conversation, and those who know me know that I do not talk much) When Jennifer and I were running very close there were very different boat speeds varying with the wind gusts. With 2 hands you could not continually change many settings, so in certain wind speeds each boat would show very different characteristics. On the whole there is not significant differences, but I have a ways to go to catch up with Jennifer on the tiller and tuning time she has on the Taipan, so who knows. (Look out for us at JPOR Jennifer) One thing is for sure, and that is that I am still really impressed with this design and very glad that I chose this boat to move up to.

Matt

Some pictures of the F16's at gulfport !

















Wouter

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