As someone who will likely be buying an F16 in the Fall I have a few questions on the costs of being in a development class. My concern is that after buying a boat, probably a Blade, that someone will come out with a new design making my boat obsolete shortly after I buy. Also, as engineer I can think of a lot tweaks that would greatly add to the speed and unfortunately the cost of the boat. I have actually done this before, although not in sailing. There was a charity race, soapbox derby cars, and Hewlett Packard hired me to consult on its car. We created a million dollar soapbox derby car that shut the event down because nobody else could afford to compete. So, the concern of my story is that I will have to spend lots of money to remain competitive.

What are the thoughts on this? Are there any cost containment measures? Or, does this class attract people, like myself, who do not plan on spending tremendous sums to gain an edge?

Thanks,

Scott

Hello Scott,

I think that I would like to give multiple answers to your single question. Just got off the water today with 2 races under my belt, sailing in the F16 1-up configuration.

But first, Formula 16 is not a development class, it is a Formula class. There is a difference and in some cases the difference is significant. For example you don't have any rule on mast height in the A-class or even a rule that prevents a sailor from bring several mast and sail combo, each for a specific wind spectrum. Formula classes however do rule on things like mast height and force every crew to one single suit of sails per event. This difference forces formula designers (and sailors) to look for the best average setup given the fixed limitation like mastheight etc.

As an engineer you will understand the following. Formula classes put limits on several key points of a higher abstract order. Example; several individual formula rules limit to maximum amount of energy a rig can milk from a given airflow, given this harsh limits any gains can only be made by becoming more efficient in using this rather fixed limit. Of course refinements like these are always more gradual than true developments. Again our mast height limit is important in this respect. Do the following mind experiment. With a fixed mast height, weight and sailarea a catamaran has a rather fixed combo of boat speed and the volume of air that is drained for energy (=boatspeed * mastheight * airspeed). The air speed is a given and so to is the mastheight; so what is left to increase boatspeed ? In a development class you could decide to lenghen your mast and such get a little more energy that you'll use to speed up a bit which in turn allows you to drain a larger volume for energy and so gain extra speed again. But by how do you do it when you have no initial path available to you to make the initial speed increase ? Energy can't just come out of nowhere !

Many people will never understand Formula rules in such a context but this actually the level on which formula class rules work.

This was my first answer , my second answer is :

You can spend all the money you want on getting the best baot under a formula rules set and still be completely blown away by a sailor on an oldie who just spend alot more hours tuning the damn thing and perfecting his starts, his tactics and his manouvres and bouy roundings. Time and time again I see that on the water skill wins out over go-fast stuff every time. We have a few ex World and European champions sailing H14, H16, P16, P18 sailing at our club and neighbouring club. It is just scary how fast these guys go on a beat-up old boat that is an old and sub optimal design as well. Everytime they spot the windshift, the favoured side of the course, and arc the bouys with an inside turn on everybody else. If you don't have your act together than sure enough you will not finished ahead of them no matter what "newest" desig you are sailing.

Again and again, the teach us all that the game of sailing is not about who has the newest boat or even the fastest boat on paper. It is about who makes the best use of the given conditions. Safe yourself a bundle of money and just buy a decent design and then spend hours and hours learning how to get the boat (and yourself) to perform to the maximum. You'll rank alot higher than when spending the same amount of time and effort on finding the next "breakthrough" or "secret wapon"

I do alot of work on my boat as well but I'm not doing any expensive development or even any rebuilding. All I'm doing is optimizing the systems that I got so they run perfectly smooth, are easy to access and work all the time without foiling up. Actually, in many cases I'm taking away stuff. Alot of things look good on paper, but are just too complex in reality. Also I spend alot of time in optimizing the sails that I got. They didn't work at all as planning in the beginning (I have of course a home-build boat) then I started experimenting with different setting and I was able to dial in my rig. I didn't new sail, I didn't even recut them. I just listened to what more experiences sailors and sailmakers told me and use very simple and ludicrous inexpensive tricks to get out of my sails what I wanted. I spend alot of time reading up on comments like those of Landenberger (See other threads) and thinking on how I could use that too my advantage. I will give you one example : I had a jib that was rather nervous. I would easily collapse when pointing a little bit too higher and not give much advance warning. On advice by Greg Goodall I experimented with carefully placing a few staples on the zipper luff sock of my jib. This showed me what I needed to do and where. Then I just took a needle and thread and placed 12 short lines of stitches at key points. Right now I got an excellent jib, very relaxed, good pull and a good advanced warning before stalling but small enough so that it keeps pulling all the way up to the fluttering point. I can point several degrees higher now. Actually one of the old champions walked up to me last saterday night after a few hours of sailing and said :"You are beginning to get that boat dialed in now aren't you; you were clearly sailing high and sailing fast". This comment coming from him means a lot (to me), this is a guy that will beat F18's and such to the line while sailing his Prindle 16. Just staying ahead of him means that you have just sailed a good race, no matter on what boat you are sailing.

But point of this story is : a stapler and a needle/thread was all it took in combination with research and carefull thought to make the boat break into its next level of performance. Financial investment; Not even 2 dollars; time investment : many and many hours researching and testing/experimenting.

Please note that my jib only has a luff tensioning line that is pretty much set-and-forget for the duration of each individual race and an easily accessible sheet line. No traveller control, no furling, no anything that makes this setup more complex than is absolutely needs to be.

So my personal advice to becoming competitive is make everything as simple a possible and foil-up free and then fully concentrate on tactics, manouvres and getting the max out of what you got by inexpensive means.


My third answer :

The blade is indeed the new kid on the block and it does seem to have a few attractive points. But mostly in the area of feel and control. In all out speed the 18 year old Taipan 4.9 is holding its own. So yes; it stands to reason that each new design will improve on the older ones but this doesn't necessarily mean that all olders design are uncompetitive. Sure a better behaved boat is "EASIER" to sail to its max, but this is not the same as "EASY to sail to its max". In the end of the day skills and tactics account for 90 % of the final result. Any extra mistake that you make relative to another crew is only be compensated by several percent more boatspeed. And the last is difficult to achieved in a formula framework if limited to designing a faster boat. Of course better trimming skill can easily result in noticeable differences in boat speed, but this is again a skill related feature that is applicable to all boats, both modern and old.


My 4th reply :




Up till now the guys and girls doing best are the ones that just go out there have a mindset to race anybody and everybody using any rating (or first in wins)

Jennifer Lindsay sails a standard Taipan 4.9 with a spinnaker (several years old) and is still the benchmark in the USA.
Gary Maskiel races the better F18's crews and A-cats off a rating equal to an a-cat or F18 and wins his races. His boat is a home build F16 using various A-cat parts and homebuild parts. Mostly because he wanted a good prices entry in the F16 scene. Same applies to me, I think that I've spend some 12.000 Euro's in total on my boat, I can't even buy a One-design singlehander for that price over here except maybe a Hobie 14.

You really don't have to spend lots of money to sail fast and do well. You just have to know what is important and what isn't and spend alot of hours practising and rerunning lines and blocks so they run more smoothly or are better to access. My most valued tool since months are the needle and thread. Stitching loops to lines instead of tying a knot. Stitching an extra guiding block to the trampoline to seperated to lines from each other etc etc.

My appologies for being a little long winded. But I think we can safely assume that you know what my thoughts on the subject are.

-1- I don't expect any breakthroughs that makes everything older obsolete
-2- Limit yourself in spending money and just concentrate more on making what you have go fast; you'll end up higher on listings then when spending your way up.
-3- Trust in the formula rule framework; It may look like several avenues for improvement are wide open but in reality they are not. Often a limit on a higher abstract level forces you into a never ending circle.
-4- Skill is the winner, always !

Wouter

Scott,

I forgot one answer, sadly it is not the nicest one.

Answer :

What is the alterative ?

A-cat ? More open in the class rules and Formula classes and arguably the most expensive boats per amount of used parts.

F18 ? Same issues are linked to this class as to all formula classes like the F16's. No real difference here.

I-17R ? This boat has seen a few design chances over the last couple of years. Besides they have the One-design myth syndrome. More on this later

FX-one ? Steady as a design, unlike the I-17's, but also subject to the one-design myth syndrome

And I can go on like this. In sailing there simply is no perfectly level playing ground. Heavy crews do better in heavy air and light crews do better in the light stuff. People are NOT one-design and so perfectly level playing field are a myth. Even in strickly One-design classes. Also alot of classes are called one-design classes when in reality the are alot more open. We all know of examples where Hobie 16 crews buy their sails of hobie and then take them apart to recut/restitch them with a different curve or overal shape. Sometimes a OD builder changes sailmaker for commericial reasons. A fine example is the 49-er class, suddenly everybody had to change their sails as the old sails were not OD anymore, what made things worse was that the new sailmaker made better sails as well. Then we have a few examples of where the market just forces changes upon OD builders. Take the Hobie Tiger one design classes. I think they had 4 major sail changes in 8 years alone. Simply because the owners prefered the F18 class over the Tiger OD class and walked away unless their new F18 sails were allowed as OD Tiger sails.

There is alot of One-design myths around. One of them being that the only OD racing determines who is the best sailor of them all. Others argue that it rather produces the crew that suits the given boat and sailing conditions the best. Actually OD class often tend to favour a lot smaller crew weight range than open classes do.

Personally, I think everybody should choose a catamaran on his intended use and "would-like-to-have" wishes. Sometimes this is a Hobie 16, sometimes this means getting an F16. After that it is just a matter of putting the required hours in to dial in the boat and get your skills perfected.

Wouter

A rather shorter answer, based on experience in the F18 class: The only people who got stung here were Dart Hawk owners. Although F18 legal, the Hawk pre-dates widespread adoption of the F18 rules (and possibly the rules themselves?) and as such, didn't make full use of the formula. Owners now face unpleasantly low re-sale value as buyers want something that fully exploits the F18 spec. As far as I'm aware, all boats that were actually designed for F18 have retained very reasonable re-sale values.

The manufacturers keep coming up with new toys to have on the boat (snuffers, new mainsail shapes, self-tackers), but the events regularly demonstrate Wouter's point - you can do very respectably on old kit, it's all down to how you sail it.

Paul

Scott,
The F16 rules have been designed to provide maximum flexabiliy and choice without advantage. No matter how much money you spend provided you stay within the rules, the broad limits imposed ensure, skill will always be the dominating factor in determininmg victory.

Regards,
Phill

Thanks for the thoughts. It sounds like the costs are reasonable to be competitive which was my main concern.