You know it looks as if this forum system allows multiple forums to be grouped together. Notice how "Formula 16 High Performance" is listed under "Formula 16 High Tech". So it's probably feasible to have a separate rules forum under the F16 umbrella (though that HT name should probably be updated).

Let me know when you want to take the Blade out for a test drive. I know you are interested in building one. I am located in Pembroke Pines, that was what? maybe 45mins north of you? The boat is stored in Opalocka, that is what? 30 mins north of you, and I go sailing at Key Biscayne, what is that? 15 mins north of you? LOL

Anyway Ricky, for the next couple of weeks, I will go under the knife for some surgery but after that I am all game!

I also sent you an email.

Robi

Robi,

Thanks for the E-Mail, Good luck.

Mark,

Why should there be a seperate forum?
A looooooooong time ago it was decided, on this forum, to name the class hp instead of ht because we wanted to stay away from the high costs and exotic materials associated with the ht.

Name issue.

it has been requested several times that the name be changed but I think Rick encounters a technical problem that prevents a change. Currently I dare not risk losing all the posts or something so I do not seek to have is "updated" anymore.

Abusive posts.

That happened a few times, however I do not administrator rights to this forum, only Rick has. I requested to have the ability to delete truly abusive posts but never really have gotten a reply. I also use the "contact administrator" function of this forum when I encounter a really abusive post (like King Weezy of Sam Evans); so it is Ricks decision wether a post stays or not.

Wouter

Mary,

I'm not going to comment yet on how these rules need to be intepretate with respect to being a member of the F16 class or not. But I'm not going to force a crew to strapped a ripped jib to there trampoline just to satisfy these rule. Same with respect to a bend spi pole. Nor am I going to prevent a crew from participating because they were unlucky to leave their jib or spi at home.

The most basic spirit of the rule is that any deviation from what is allowed as a max may no constitude an unfair increase in overall performance relative to other maximized F16's. Now we know quite well by now that anybody racing without a jib on a otherwise full compliant boat does NOT any advantage over a fully rigged sloop F16. If anything it has a noticeable disadvantage. The higher pointing simply does not make up for the loss of drive. Same for not having a spi pole and therefor not having a spi. Sure on the first upwind leg the pole less boat will have a slight advantage but after that it is "bye-bye baby" ! It will get creamed on the downwind legs and to such an extend that no amount of upwing advantage can overcome that. Ask the A-cat guys about how that feels.

I wasn't commenting on whether there should be, only that it appears to be technically possible to have more than one forum under the F16 umbrella. Chuck mentioned that he found the rules discussions rather tedious and would prefer if there was a way he could just read posts that are actually about sailing F16s. If there were a demand, it looks like it can be done while still keeping all the F16 stuff together. Personally, I enjoy reading everything, but I can certainly understand the feelings of those with less arcane interests.



My point precisely. Yet the HT name is still on the site as the name of the forum group. Wouter has since addressed this issue in his response.

Mark.

Can't people just NOT READ the things that don't interest them? Heck, I don't read posts about gelcoat repair, but I don't want boat maintenance to have its own forum. I love the variety on the forums. That's why there are different threads on different subjects.

It is great that this forum is so active -- it has definitely justified its existence as a forum separate from the Open Forum.

And the more posts there are on this forum, the more active and popular the class appears to be to outsiders. So I don't think you would want to break it up into different forums for different categories.

Very few people are interested in reading about or thinking about rules, and most people are smart enough to only read what interests them -- just like when reading a newspaper.

Steve,
I must say that your following statement-

"I agree with being inclusive, but we must be careful to include those with a common goal ie that of promoting the F16 class."

is pretty much wnat I'm on about.

Even if these people with the common goal don't have a boat. Provided they want what is best for the class as a whole, then each and every one is an assett. They are walkig advertisements for the class. A simple conversation around what they did over the weekend (ie. watching the F16s in action) can be the beginning of introducing a new member to the class.

So we need to include everyone that wants to be included but ensure the direction taken is for the good of the F16 class as a whole.

The trick is how to achieve the best of both worlds.
Include everyone as they all have value and ensure the class moves in the direction that is in its best interest.



Regards,
Phill

Hi Phill,

"The trick is how to achieve the best of both worlds.
Include everyone as they all have value and ensure the class moves in the direction that is in its best interest"

Agree completely - I`ll leave the mechanism up to you & Wouter to sort out though !

Keeping this post short - gotta go home now & get the boat ready for our solo champs - short report on Tuesday. Unfortunately only Mozzies will take part under F16, we need a guy like Gary !!

Cheers
Steve

Just an outsider view here.
What about two levels of membership. In the Star class (mono's) we had associate memberships for crews, fans, inactive sailors ect.. which gave them newsletters and complete involvement, however to vote on rules, you must be a voting member which requires you to be a boat owner.
cheers

I don't have a dog in this fight, (as the red-neck's down here like to say), but I'm glad there are people like Wooter, Phill and Matt, who will do the necessary work to get this class going.

I expect someday I will have one of Matt's Blades to race, here in the states. I expect I will only be racing against other Matt's Blades (MB's) and the Tai Pans, (we call them F'n Snakes) and will never see a Stealth or any other F16 around here.

As long as we all are pretty close to the same sail area, I'm happy. I have never seen anyone measure sails at a cat regatta but at all national dinghy championships, you must show up a day early and they do measure them.

A problem arises when you get a sail maker who also races and wants to push all the measurements, but to be fair, they should of course make the sails to the maximum size, so there needs to be a consistant measurement method to keep it fair.

But, do you intend to measure sails at every regatta? I doubt it. It doesn't take that long if you lay a pattern on the ground and lay the others over it, but you know someone always shows up late, with little time to rig, and bing-bang-boom they are out on the water.

I don't think an inch or two here or there matters in the big scheme of things, as one blown tack will offset any few inches of extra sail area.

But, if some guy wants to add 6" to the leach and a foot to the spinnaker luff, we may have a problem.

I think your post may have ended up in the wrong thread Tim,

With respect to sailarea. Over time, I came to believe deeply that recreational sailors make for too much of it. Remarkable is that active racers couldn't care less. Rig specs that are important in order magnitude are :

-1- Sail shape
-2- Sail trim
-3- Mast height
-4- Mast shape
-5- Luff length
-6- Sail area

(I left sail sheeting out of it but that is of course the most dominant factor).

The amount of area is therefor at the very bottom of the list; Within reason of course. Meaning as the difference in area or less than 5 % of the total. Both experiences (reference testing of my own sail to that of the standard Taipan) and scientific models point very much in this direction. The newer mainsail shapes have better gust response and accellerate better or keep the crew better on the wire, but in the way of all-out speed they are the same. The old sails just need more active sheeting to keep the sail driving than the new shape sails. As we are a formula class and don't have identical sails we will always have this inequality. However it must not be forgotten that One-design sails suffer from similar problems depending on how motivated the particular sailmaker was when he made a certain OD sail. Best about Formula is that quality control is more assured with respect to sails, but that is a different topic.

Best way to picture the whole situation is to regard a volume of air as containing a fixed portion of energy that can be harvested by a sail. The size and (position) of this volume is fully determined by the luff length (mast height), pointing angle and boat speed. When the luffs are all pretty much the same than all designs have the same potential amount of harvested energy per second when skippered right. This makes these boats equal. When a certain skipper is unable to achieve sufficient boatspeed by correct trim than he will cross a smaller volume per second and harvest less energy than a competitor and therefor go slower. This is not because he rig can not go faster but because his skills are still insufficient to speed the boat up even more to cross a larger volume of energy and harvest more energy. So this is sort of a postive feedback angle that makes rather small differences in much larger differences on the water. But all can be overcome by skill.

It doesn't really matter much wether you have 2 or 3 inches more area on your leech than an older sail when the luff lengths and boat platforms are the same. A smaller sail with the right trim can harvest the maximum amount of energy from a volume of air than a slightly bigger sail. Actually the guys doing best in the F16 class now are all sailing with sails that are less then the maximum allowed area. This is because they are just better sails and the difference in area that we are talking about is too small to matter in a significant way. Take note however that the new sail shapes are more significant ! So when Matt become really competitive to Jennifer it is not because of the luff length or sail area but because of the newer sailshapes. Of course in a formula class we don't rule on sail shape and the difference is probablay still measured in than 30 seconds or less per hour of racing. One doesn't need much difference in skill to overcome that.

All in all things stay pretty far as 90 % of the end result is directly sailor skill related and independent of the used hardware (when that is reasonably comparable between the makes).

Actually the small increase in area is good news for the older Taipan boats. With this they can get the newer mainsail shapes without having to take area away from the foot of the sails and having to fix a traveller system on their booms. This keeps thing less expensive AND more equal. The last is easy to see when realizing that no matter what the new mainsail shapes will get introduced and be used in the Formula 16 class. Forcing the older boats to continue to sail with the old shapes or having to invest in modified boom systems is neither fair nor attractive. Remember sailshape is more important is the overall result than sail area. And this is another reason why the simplification of the rules is to be favoured over the old rule.

Wouter

Tim,
You said, This happens at all national catamaran championships of classes that allow open sails -- for instance, the Wave Class and the Tornado Class and, I'm sure, the A-Class, and maybe the Shark Class.

And at national events involving the Hobie class boats, the boats themselves all have to be weighed, and if they are under minimum weight, they have to add weight to the boat. And the crews are weighed, and if they are too low on crew weight, they have to add weight for that, also.

At the Spring Fever Regatta all the F18's were up in one area being measured and weighed -- and that was not even a national championship.

Lots of weighing and measuring going on out there that maybe nobody notices.

Ok, never mind.

Agreed, associate membership would be a very good way to support the F16 class and stay in touch. I wont be eligible to join the class until Jan 2006 but would like to show my support now, I bet there are many more who feel the same way. I've spoken to three other local sailors with plans to move into F16 but it takes time to change classes. It would be great to show support now with an associate member scheme.
Darryn
Mosquito 1704
Adelaide

Hi Darryn

So are you putting a spinnaker on the Mozzie, building a Blade or ???????????

Spinnaker on the Mosquito, I've been using your excellent guide on the Victorian Mosquito website http://home.vicnet.net.au/~mosquito/sp_rigging.htm
to work out what I need and will pick up the spinnaker when I am over there for the Nationals. That will give me a couple of weeks to debug it prior to Milang to Goolwa race.
Until then I am gathering the various bits and pieces together and learning to sail the boat in its standard format.
Darryn

I concurr (speaking as a private F16 owner)

Laid my F16 on the beach this weekend; it had been at the Spring Cup club for the last month for the racing. At my club there is interest in both boats and association. It will take time before they are owners and so indeed seperation between associate and owner membership may be a good one. Of course I'm just a talking as a private owner here and not as the chairman. Phill Brander is handling the membership project now and I won't interfere with his proceedings.

Between you and me guys, I can't wait to unpack Jaaps new boat. Blade F16. And at my club I'm are not the only one. Could be the start of something

Wouter