Hot news ! Read all about it.

Two bits of info were just received shortly after one another.

First an announcement made by Boyer Fibrecraft (Known for their involvement in the company AHPC)





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Hi all,

Just a quick note to confirm any rumors.

Boyer fibrecraft ceased manufacturing in Australia last friday. That does not mean I'm gone, just different. I'm still involved with the F18 and are still able to source parts. I doubt I will be sailing again for some time though, I just need to be away from that for a while.

So whats happened.

My foils have been taken over by one of my employees, and I can still supply these for you.

The tool A class hulls have been taken over by Mobile Fibreglass in Bendigo (another of my ex employees) These were not my moulds, Wayne Mercer owns them and you can contact him on 03 59 889 794 for further info.

I have not passed the Taipan moulds to anyone at the moment, though there are 3 businesses in Bendigo that are able to do the job. I will retain ownership of the moulds. I also have the older Taipan mould overseas, but that would require a large order to be economic. Gordon Barrett 9561 3335 can supply info on this.

My equipments has mostly being sold, and I've got a few spare A class, tornado and mosquito moulds for sale.

I have 2 new business ideas to follow, one is in the grey water industry- I'm hoping to have a spot on the new inventers in Feb, and the second is in the fibreglass/ boat building industry.
I will put more info on these on my website in January, in the mean time I'm having a bit of time off.

My phone number will remain as 03 5447 7700 and my email is now boyerfib@aapt.net.au or from Jan 1 jim@boyer.com.au

Best wishes to all.

Jim Boyer

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The second is the official name launch of AHPC's new 16 foot design; The Viper F16

When being developped some of us called this design the Baby Capricorn of Capricorn F16. However these names are not to be used anymore.

This boat is AHPC's replacement of the Taipan design for markets outside of Australia. However, the Viper will also be launched in the Australian market. I was under the impression that the Taipan would be continued alongside of the Viper but the above announcement by Jim Boyer makes this questionable.

The Viper F16 is AHPC's purpose build entry into the Formula 16 class and it is their full intention that it will become its new benchmark. One of the major improvements over its predessor is the price of a new boat; I've personally seen the intended European retail price for the Viper and it is no less then 20 % cheaper. And that is quite a sum.

With this new quote it enters a direct competition with the imported Blade F16 in the EU market.

It too feaures a wave-piercier hull design and will come fitted as a capable racer. It will have a fully redesigned mainsail, one that has been fully optimized to F16 specs. And it will feature things like a selftacking jib and high aspect daggerboards. It will be ready to meet both the F16 as F18 competition !

Wouter

High aspect dagger boards! I heard somewhere where the blades are going to high aspect dagger boards as well.

What are the advantages of high aspect dagger boards, compared to what is used today and vice versa?

My new boat will be having hi-aspect plates too.

Couple moer weeks and I'll hopefully have it - Just in time for it to get real cold over here <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

High aspect daggerboards are a trade-off. It is not that one setup is better then the other in all conditions. But it appears that the high aspect board do strike a more attractive compromise then the low aspect boards.

First what is a high aspect daggerboard ? The aspect ratio is defined as the result of dividing the square of the exposed length (under water) by the exposed area. And it is a regulary used measure for the slenderness of a foil. It is a key measurement in any foil design. Roughtly speaking the higher the aspect ratio is the better the ratio between lift and induced foil drag is. So you can get more sideways resistance for a smaller penalty in drag. But in real life things are never as easy as this.

You can overdo it in aspect ratio and end up with a boat that just won't lay still on the start-line, it will drift sideways quite fast when its hull speed is below a certain minimal value. This is a big disadvantage as a another boat with normal boards can just park underneath you and wait till you hit him and then protest you out of the race. Only option is then to sail over the line early and restart. It needs no explanation that this is can be a serious drawback.

Low aspect boards have the advantage of allowing the boat to quickly get up to speed. And they do allow very harsh turns. In heavy winds the low aspect boards will allow you to depower later and thus put more power into the rig.

In ligher winds the high aspect boards put you on the trap sooner and thus lift the luff hull clear of the water earlier allow some drag reduction that way as well.

So you see it all dependents where you put the most weight.

Currently the newest F18's have all aspect ratios between 5.0 and 5.5. This is unimaginable high with respect to only 5 years ago. Allowing carbon cloth in the F18 daggerboards excellerated this development.

The stealth F16 featured higher aspect boards since the beginning; aspect ratio = 3. The Spitfire has a daggerboard ratio of 3 as well. The Viper F16 will probably end up around 4 to 4.5. The Taipan and Blade have ratio's of 1.9. This is growing into a significant difference. It was time for the Taipan and Blade F16 to go with the times. Well the Taipan is now being replaced by the Viper and the Blade is going for a new daggerboard design.

Funny enough in really light winds and strong winds the low aspect boards are very comparable to the high aspect ones in the way of pointing and speed. It is the mid section of windconditions were the low aspect boards are lacking a bit.

There is also another drawback of low aspect boards, one that is linked to one of its best advantages. You can keep the low aspect boards fully extended to very high windranges. This means less work on board and nothing in the way to hit your elbow on. However when you do raise them a bit their lift to drag ratio decreases rapidly. Also the F16's are more and more sailed both as a 1-up and 2-up boat, raising your daggerboards is becoming more and more a standard procedure to depower a boat. The high aspect boards do allow a singlehanded sailor a better fine-tuning of the exposed board area without decreasing the lift/drag ratio too much. It should also make the boats calmer when doing 1-up in a blow while retaining pointing.

In order to win back some midrange performance and to not get the difference with the main competition get too big it was decided to develop the Blade F16 daggerboard further.

But it is not going as high in aspect ratio as the newest F18's. The new boards have an aspect ratio of about 4. This should give them enough boost in the midrange without trading-off too much of the advantages the old design did have.

For all you low aspect board sailors out there (and I'm one of them myself). There is a trick to get some additional performance out of your boards. Especially when the the boat is flightly you can try to almost fully lift your luff board and keep the leeward board fully down. You'll load up the leeward board alot more but that is the intention and it can easily withstand the forces. The intended effect can be explained like this :

A high aspect board cat can raise both boards (aspect ratio 4) halveway and end up with halve the exposed area operating at a new aspect ratio of 2. If the low aspect ratio boarded boat (=2) would do the same then he would end up with halve the area too but operating at an aspect ratio of only 1. However, if this boat would fully extend its leeward board and fully raise the windward one then he would also end up with halve the area but now operating at an aspect ratio of 2 as well.

The only drawback is that you'll have to move the boards up and down during each tack. But this may be worth it. Having higher aspect boards makes this easier.


Good luck,

Wouter

Great so now all the blades currently sailing will be outdated. Its been what? just a little over a year?

No Robi, they will not be outdated.

You are not reading my post right. There is no clear winner in this. I expressed that very clearly in my first phrase. I even gave a trick to get a comparable performance out of the current boards. See the end of my posting. It is just less work with the newer ones.

Compare it switching your sails from a high grade dacron cloth to pentex cloth. Both cloths react differently to different conditions but over a broad spectrum of conditions there isn't must difference between them. The increased stiffness of Pentex is prefered by racers now and so every customer wants Pentex as well. As a builder you have to move with these psychological perceptions.

I can switch over to the new design daggerboards for probably 200 bucks, the amount needed to insert a new daggerboard case in my hull, but I'm personally not considering it at this time. There is not enough in it. I'm happy to get them with my next boat, and that one is still a few years away.

Hell I'm sailing a design that predates yours by 15 years and I still feel fully competitive. Not all changes make previous designs outdated overnight.

Wouter

I agree it is too early to tell, but I bet you could figure out a way to retro fit higher aspect boards into lower aspect wells. Not so the other way around <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />.

I bet (and this is only a guess)that performance diff will be so small that the good skippers will still win.

Welcome to formula class rules!! I love it.

If sailboats are balanced systems with regards to forces. How can a high AR daggerboard make you fly a hull earlier? Doesnt this suggest that the daggerboards with longer chords should have been longer (and thus have a higher AR) from the beginning, developing more lift earlier?

I do think the daggerboard discussion blocks out the more important news of how Boyers announcement might influence the F-16 class.
E.g. what will now happend with the one-design Taipan 4.9 class?

Rolf, true statement. We should be very happy that AHPC is jumping full force into the F16 scene. This is great news.

First, if I did come across to harsh then I appologize to you Robi.

Secondly, I want to explain to everybody that I seem to have developped an oversensitivity to screams of "boats being outdated". That explains my reaction.

If you all knew how difficult it is to make a boat like the F16 1 % faster around the course and how easy it is too loose that same 1 % on one single bad tack then you would understand my frustration. And remember 1 % is only 27 seconds in a 45 min race !

We are talking very small incrediments here. There is simply no way that this change can make a boat of last year outdated. That would require an improvement of at least 5 % and we are nowhere near that level.

Wouter

I did not think you came over harsh. I think your post was very clear, precise and to the point.

Me personally I think I still have a lot to learn to worry about high or low aspect boards.

Picture this : both boards (low AR and high AR) having the same area as this is determined mainly by the size of the rig and the expect speed range of the boat, THEN a taller board will have a larger leverage over the shorter board. Ergo the boat will try to capsize over its leeward daggerboard sooner.






My guess is that it will be replaced by the AHPC designed and build Viper F16.

Not much will be changing internationally as the Taipan 4.9 OD class had already grown unmarketable. Hence the Taipan F16 version. However producing this version was too costly compared to the other F16 designs available. In the EU the imported Blade F16 was priced 2000 Euro's cheaper then the Taipan F16. In the US the difference was even bigger because no international shipping costs were added to the Blade then. This inbalance will be restorted with the much cheaper Viper F16.

I do think that this announcement will be shock to some Australian Taipan sailors. Sure enough parts will remain available for the Taipan design and AHPC will continue to support it. Alot of components are the same as on the Viper F16 anyway. But still, the Taipan mould is not at any active builder right now and this makes it hard to imagine that more NEW boats will be build. Add to this that new Viper F16 is quoted to Australian customers at 3000 Aus$ less then the Taipan 4.9 and you'll see why I don't fancy the Taipan 4.9 chances over its Viper F16 replacement.

The Taipan F16 was and still is a good boat and it will be with us for quite a few more years, I'll still be sailing it myself for much longer, but in its future is now only retirement.

Wouter

Is it as simple as that? If both foils develop the same amount of lift to windward, I would have tought the "capsize momentum" around the leeward hull would be the same.

not if the resulting force of one board is acting at a larger leverage point then on the other board.

Wouter

The centre of a longer board will be lower than the centre of a shorter board, hence more heeling lever arm, hence more heeling moment.

Hi All

I think the that fact that Jim is not selling the Taipan moulds says a little more than what you might believe. The fact that there are three builders willing to produce the hulls for the Australian market says a fair bit. I realise that it doesn't look as good internationally, unless there is an order for three boats at any one time.

The fact that the tornado, mosquito, foils and some of the a class moulds are the ones being sold, may reflect this.

I know some would like to see the Taipan fade out, and internationally it may very well do that. But as has been pointed out on both the F16 and open forums, the Australian market, the place of conception if you will, continues to support a fantastic, modern (and it still is), Australian design.

I believe that you have to look at the broader picture, the Taipan OD, doesn't have to and hasn't hung its hopes on the F16 Class, in order to survive. In many ways it similiar to the Mosquito, not really a international class, although I am fully aware of its strength in South Africa, but the class is cruising along nicely at the moment, and not just because of the introduction of spinnakers to a number of its members.

As with Blade, Taipan, Mosquito and several other classes, you will always be able to build the boats with plans, this in itself will keep classes alive, now when you build a boat at home you can be as competitive as the next person, and for many years, which makes homebuilding in my opinion a more attractive proposition for the future.

Anyway I'm not taking anything away from F16 or the new Viper 16, just a little reminder that classes like the TaipanOD and a long way off dying out, if that were the case there wouldn't be any TaipanF16 sailing around either, the owners would have moved on to the newer designs.

Now I realise I haven't always seen eye to eye F16 wise, however I do support what you're trying to achieve, building up numbers for the class, and introducing new designs to keep the F16 at the forefront. But it sometimes, just a little bit, every now and then, surprises me of the members who contribute to the possibility of a class going under, when they themselves competitively sail the designs in question, even if they do differ in terms of rig and setup. At the end of the day, and whether its seen this way or not, we are both sitting on the windward taipan hull.

If the TaipanOD, decides in the future that F16 is the way to go, then it will have my full support, but at the moment, the class is happy and healthy, and we will continue to have fun, race competitively, and enjoy our sailing.

Regards

Also worth remembering the Boyer and AHPC are no longer the same beast and haven't been for a while. Is this the final act in the separation?

On the foils. Didn't the Nacra F18 have the aspect ratio reduced on its foils after a couple of seasons, or was it just the thickness that changed?

Hi Again

I believe in the last couple of years Jim has seen his experienced employees head down a different path themselves, most importantly would be Todd Pickering, who owns the Geltek company and produces the new Flyer A Class, and as the letter from Jim reads, another employee has gone out on his own.

The A Class was certainly Boyers strongest product, both the Mk5 and Aussie Flyer, and Todd gaining the building rights for the new Flyer (and I would go as far as to say that Jim didn't put his hand up for the new flyer), would moved Boyer more into the industrial side of his business, which may be has something to do with the grey water business idea.

As the designs have moved overseas and to other builders, it may be break Jim has been looking for. I would be interested to know what the second idea (fibreglass/boatbuilding) would be based upon, he certainly has the experience, eye for detail, and would be considered to be the best builders in the world, so if he gets back into it, then look out.

Regards

No doubt about that. I do indeed consider myself a Taipan sailor. The Taipan was the first design of a line of boats that I really do love. And it will always be the father of what came after.

I thoroughly enjoy sailing my Taipan F16 and it will stay with me for several more years.

And then I will switch too.

The rest, I'm sorry to say, is now a mute point from my perspective.


With kind regards,

Wouter

The nacra F18 design switch to a a lower aspect ratio daggerboard design halveway through it's production period.

It went from 198x1000 mm = aspect ratio 5.05 (same board as the Inter 18) to 255x1000 mm = aspect ratio 3.92




Looks like that to me.


Wouter

High aspect boards are not a selling point for me as the high aspect boards are much more problematic and there’s absolutely no guarantee you’ll go any faster or win any more races then you would on the less problematic low aspect board. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

What a great thread! Discussion, rumours AND technology.. Catsailor, got to love it!!:)

Also depends on the definition of "high aspect".

As wouter said above, some of the F18's are using plate at an aspect ratio of 6. The plates for my new F16 will be around 4.8.

Wouter

I've trying to find more detail on the official name launch, theres nothing on the AHPC website and can't find anything through searches. Any ideas?

Regards

The REAL launch will be when the boat is production ready and that will be later this winter or at the latest at the F16 global event in aug 2007.

I have been in communication with Greg Goodall over the last week and on thursday he wrote me :


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Hi Wouter,

Yes, we have decided that the new F16 will be called the Viper F16.
We kicked around a lot of other names but this one got the most positive
response. Please use this name when discussing the boat with other sailors.
I have attached a couple of pictures to give you an idea of where I am
heading with the design.
The hull shape is from the Capricorn concept with some major upgrades.
The rig is the same as the one in the photos of the Taipan F16's that we sent
to Germany last year.

Regards,
Greg

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The rig he is talking about is this one :


http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1642

http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1646

http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1649


These pictures are public domain and have been used for advertisement in the past. For example on the dealor webpage of Sven Lindstaedt :

http://www.lindstaedt.com/neuboote....=Taipan%20F16&nra=25&x=0

But they have never appeared on the AHPC website itself. I guess the same will apply to the Viper info. I do believe it is the exact same rig that is being proposed (or at least the mainsail part) at the upcoming Taipan AGM meeting. On the boat you can see some other modifications as well. Some of them will be found on the Viper.

The other pictures I keep confidential at this time. Greg hasn't cleared me for public domain usage.

Wouter

To reiterate, those photos show the anticipated rig on a widened Taipan platform. The CAD diagrams of the hull shape are what I found really intriguing.