Not taking anything away from Matt & Gina but aren't we forgetting that IF they were sailing a Cat with canted hulls etc they might have won and Qualified?
Good points Mark,
I will further support my proposal. And it is just that, a proposal.
I propose uncanted hulls and uncanted daggerboards because ;
-1- No clear quantizied advantage of canted can be shown as of yet. I would elaborate but it will be much easier to ask to other side to provide actual data that canting is faster. I, for one, have over the last 5 years not been able to quantize its effect, either positive OR negative. I propose to not include complexity adding components to a design UNLESS their is a clear and quantizied advantage to doing so.
-2- Canted hulls are best implemented by making assymetrical hulls. Not something a homebuilder appreciates. You can't make both hulls from one mould or deck jib anymore. Therefor canting adds cost in building the boat. Same can be said, but too a lesser extend, with respect to canted boards.
-3- Canted hulls and boards appear to be a drawback in conditions where you can't luff your windward hull. Often this is the region where most people do poorly. I must rather trade in some "overpowered weather" performance for good "underpowered weather" performand then the other way around. Such compromises will have to be performed more often during the design. You can design the perfect craft for 10-15 knots and end up with a total dud in 0-10 and 15-25 knots. Lets not design the cats equivalent of a "single gear race car".
-4- Which way do you cant it ? In or out. For a time outward cant was popular in A-class now inward canting is. If you decide on inward canting the will stick out to the side and could become a very nice shin basher when you are trapezing in rought conditions. An uncanted board has the advantge that it is well out of the way there in the middle of the hull.
Now allow me to reply to the other statements.
A's have been a development class for years longer than F16's and nearly all the top designs are canted hulls.
True, however on this forum a few years ago, Jim Boyer himself wrote that the only difference they found with canting was that the boat steered a little better in the mid range winds, something that was found advantagious when wildthinging the boat. No noticeable speed advantage was reported beyond improved control that in turn allows to maintain top speed better. AHPC had just put out the mark 4 Boyer A-cat which was effectively a Mark 3 but with canted hulls. In F16's we don't do much of wildthing at all. Under spinnaker the way the boat behaves is different from a boat without that does the wildthing.
I'm argueing that this could be a case of where a thing that works in A-cats might well not work in F16's. And there are alot more of these things. I won't elaborate but A-cats and F16's are remarkably different craft. The A-cat designs operate under a very different set of balances and specification, often to such extend that data acquired there is not easily transferable to F16's.
I can also state here that I spoke to 3 different A-cat builders/designers about this and all said that they didn't think that canted hulls would help much at all on boats that carried a crew of two. I won't elaborate so you can dismiss this point I you want.
Lets not fall into the Tiger Trap. Tigers have won the F18 Worlds on nearly every occassion but IMO this is can be attributed mainly to Hobie buying the right crews and not necessarily designing the optimum F18.
The Capricorn F18 is uncanted in both boards and hulls : 2006 world champions
The Cirrus F18 is uncanted in both boards and hulls : 2002 world champions
All other world championships ever held were won by the Hobie Tiger (uncanted/uncanted)
So no worlds was ever won by a canted/canted design.
Note how no new F18 has canted boards anymore, only a few have canted hulls. I think only the Nacra Infusion has canted hulls as one of the newer F18 designs. I think we can regard the F18 as a development class of long standing as well.
I refer back to my original point; unless it provides a clear and quantizeable advantage then I wouldn't propose making the design more complex then necessary.
However having said all this, I propose that is people are committed to canted hulls and daggerboards then lets open up a parallel design path where the alternative design has them. Then when both are done we can look at which is the most attractive when balancing performance potential to things like production considerations and cost.
Wouter
