David, thanks for the insight into the prior communications. I think it shows that they are willing to discuss how best to "group" the classes. I understand completely about having a general F16 rating, but also having Blade F16, T4.9 F16, etc ratings. Not every committee will know to look at F16 only.

I am concerned about Uni versus double. We promote the class as equal racing in both configurations, so that should carry over to open fleet racing, too.

Although the idea of racing open fleet with the current F16 uni rating is very appealing . I'll take that bet.

I sent Darline a email on how we should proceed and included some of the discussion points.

Here's an interesting Portsmouth calculation:

What is a "uni"? A sloop, but sailed solo and without a jib. OK, take any standard sloop 2-up rating and apply two modifications. First, sailed "light", you take a weight modifier. Since the F16 has no class weight minimum, Portsmouth requires you to take the L4 0.97 modifier (a recent and very wise rule). This says "lighter is faster". Second, remove the jib and apply the "US" 1.026 modifier. No jib will slow down the faster light boat. Now, these 2 are combined...

0.97 x 1.026 = 0.995

A very small change indeed! So Portsmouth says a uni is SLIGHTLY (0.5%) faster than a sloop. I agree, in 16 foot boats weight is a HUGE factor and the small jib only works upwind.

Bottom line, Portsmouth says uni and sloop are nearly identical. My thinking is the separate numbers for the F16 uni vs sloop flies in the face of normal Portsmouth reasoning as the F16 numbers, 67.1 and 65.2, says the uni is 2.8% SLOWER than the sloop.

If you register F16 or F18, no modifiers should be be allowed. If F16 says uni = sloop, so be it. If you register for Portsmouth "open class" as Taipan or Blade, then you use modifiers and suffer the 0.5% modification (big deal). Basically, uni still equals sloop.

Dump all specialized numbers! Each boat gets one sloop number, then apply the modifiers. Modifiers are required for everyone else so why should F16, Dart 18, or the Supercat 15 get special numbers?

Dump the special ratings. To use Portsmouth you have to believe in it and let it work. "Let us proclaim the mystery of faith..." Portsmouth is God.

I've registered for JPOR and asked for 2-up scoring eventhough I'll be sailing uni.

Dear all,

I am following the discusion about the rating and i have a few items to say.
1. The F16 is build with the box rules.
I want to say with this that the different types of F16's are build/designed according this box rule. There must be NO difference for these boats. The difference there is is the shape of hull, sail etc etc, but they are all F16 boats. When i compare this to A-class ( the same difference of boat/hull types are there also)everybody is speeking of the A-class and NOT about the Flyer MKI or MK2 or Marstrom,BIM or any other type in the Yardsticks. For F16 is this the same. You have a full F16 or you have another boat with another handycap. When the measurement form is ready all the limits are in that form and when the boat after measurment does not comply to the measurement form (class rules) than the boat,sail needs to be changed to fit in the class rules.
2. F16 one-up or 2 up.
In my upinion the yardstick for both setup's must be the same. Why?. To avoid a wrong discussion if one set up is quicker or slower, i want to say that both setup's are F16 and to have clear statement to the sailing committees around the world, do threath the boats as equal. And yes in a lighter condition the one up is maybe quicker than the 2 up, buty the other way around with more wind the 2 up is probably quicker than the 1 up. The only thing is when you for example are normally sailing 1 up at your club and there is a rating for the 1 up and you make the disicion to sail it 2 up (also the other way around) than the race (handycap) committie is getting confused because they do not when it's not told to them which handycap to use. When it is 1 handycap number you will never have the problem of getting the wrong number for your boat.
3. Chamionships
When there F16 championships are sailed you are only sailing with F16 boats and these are all full F16 boats and then in relation to the measurement form we are working on, they must have a measured boat within the class rules. The idea of getting this form ready as soon as possible is to have 1 document which is beiing used by all F16's sailors around the world so there is no misunderstanding about the measurements and the boat.

As conclusion i would say, the F16 class is set up with the change of getting different type of boats with different sail makers and different configurations to have the development of F16 sailboat to a higher level but the class/design rules are that clear that the boat always needs to fit in this box rules, that's where it's made for.

Regards,

Hans Klok
Chairman F16 governing council.

Okay guys- I have been silent on this but as the original US F16 representative and one of the originators of the Formula (Wouter, Phill- remember when we originally were the "F16HP" class and the discussions we had about that choice?) and the one who approached Darline originally to give the Taipan 4.9 and then F16 a Portsmouth number (provisional until results could be had) here's what we did- Anybody remeber the original BIM16? Well, it was a "strict" uni (ie cat rig) and one of the "original" F16 charter boats but the 4.9 (really the start of the F16's in US and until the Blade the only one raced here after the BIM disappeared quickly) was designed to be raced either way. Australia had a long history with the 4.9 either way and the VYC had found the 4.9 uni slower than the sloop and had it rated that way. The VYC numbers were used to help "guesstimate" the provisional numbers for the 4.9 so this resulted in a "slower" number for the uni. Then we came up with the F16 concept and to get provisional numbers for it Darline agreed to go with the 4.9 uni and sloop numbers (which by that point had dropped from the original provisional number and were backed up by then with some results) and simply "apply" the spinnaker modification to come up the F16 numbers.
Just to muddy the waters now that I hopefully cleared some things up- Let me remind everyone here that a class legal 4.9 is NOT a "fully optimized" F16 but a class legal one design and so the 4.9 COULD technically ask to be scored as a 4.9 with the spinnaker modification if they chose to sail that way vs as an F16 (assuming they met all the 4.9 rules- if they have added a big top main, self-tacker jib, increased beam, etc. then they can't use this option).

Kirt