New Blade

I just arrived home with my new Blade this afternooon. I picked it up from Vectorworks last week June 30 and drove it home during the last 3 days(Phoenix). I would like to thank Chuck H. for spending several hours of his Friday afternoon showing my wife and I the mast and spinnaker setup. Matt M. was on vacation and was not available. Just as Chuck H. mentioned, my front mast yoke came loose. I stopped at Home Depot on the way across Texas and added a Nylock nut.

I hope to set up the boat this weekend and will be building a sail box next weekend using HDPE plastic sheet. I will post pictures later next week. My spinnaker was late so it is being shipped directly to my house. The rudder and dagger boards are very light compaired to my H20 rudders and boards. I was supprised to see the new rudder setup. I thought the lockdown rod was being used. It uses a pulldown line. I will reserve judgement on the rudder setup until after I sail it through surf in Rocky Point Mexico. I have to clean up the boat and trailer after my 2200 mile drive back home (bug juice).

Is "bug juice" the name of your new boat? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Congrats Stephen! Gotta agree with Robie, let's see it! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Not much of the boat, but good shot of a happy fat man at work. Robi, note the intensity of the crew!

ehheheheh YEP! I saw that! ahhahahah

First pictures. Dirty with plastic film and duct tape.

Another view when dirty.

After a bath. Notice the front mast support has been reversed (A better angle for the load and more room for my 12 foot long container I am building next weekend).

View 2.

View 3.

View 4.

View 5. Wow, the bottom is really flat.

I have to complete the rigging possibly tomorrow. I have to wait until I receive my spinnaker before I do a complete setup at home. I think I am sail number 718.

NOW thats what I am talking about!!!!

Congrats, its hard to tell, but does your cross beams have end caps?

Would you post a pic of the spare tire mounting? Seems like a good place.

thanks

For the spare tire - U bolt through the tire hub and lug. Very good place for it.

Very nice, Stephen. Congratulations on the new boat. Makes we want to go sailing....

BTW, check your PM.

Me wanna Blade too <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

What are you waiting for then? <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

That is such a beauty....im counting the days until I finally check one out up-front!

Congrats on the new boat! Obviously, I would have preferred to see you get an f-18 boat (tiger or Infusion) so we could race straight up, but I am curious to see the Blade. Rumor has it that an f-16 is racing in the Milt; any chance that is you?
Give me a shout, mattmanmorris@hotmail.com

Need to convince a few over here. I don´t want to race handicap, and here in Spain there is only H16 and A-class if you want to avoid handicap.

Once Stephen gets it all sorted out. You may be surprised how well the Blade (or any F16) holds up on the F18s - boat for boat. Don't let the 16 foot length fool you. This is a beast and is a lot to handle.

I don't doubt that for one second! Stephen is a great sailor, and the Blade looks like a fast boat. I was surprised to see the portsmouth rating at 65.2 though for this boat, when the f-16 web site states that the f-16 sailed two up is compatible with the f-18 (62.4 portsmouth). I am curious to see how the blade performs, especially in a stiff breeze. Have the f-16s raced in any long distance races yet? I was just wondering how the light boats do, getting out through big surf?

The ability to sail both single or double handed competitively is attractive to me. However, I enjoy racing the Great Texas and I am looking forward to doing the Tybee.
Plus, with the exception of Stephen, there are no other Blades or f-16s sailors in our area that I know of. The f-18 fleet in California is a good competitive group and was a large factor in my decision to get a Tiger.

That is a BS rating by the way. This has been plaquing the US F16's from day one.In the rest of the world we are all racing of F18 handicaps or only 1 % slower. Not 5 % slower as the US handicap would have it.

And it must be said, a good portion of the F18 sailors are simply better sailors then the F16 sailors and this skewing statistical based handicap data.

The singlehanded handicap situation is even worse.

But lets not go into that discussion again.





Stiff breeze is not a problem. The mid range winds is the more interesting part. 8 to 13 knots. Here the more modern F18's seem to have the advantage. As they also have in relation to older F18 designs.




What is a big surf ? I think I sail in spot that qualifies as having big surf often (more then not actually). Haven't broken a part yet. Ohh that is not true actually, I broke a halyard shackle in two last year during one of those fine Dutch race days. 20 knots of wind with gusts over that and 3 to 4 foot waves/surf with very short wave length. And I repaired some wear on my rudderboards this winter (after two years of use) but I was never prevented from sailing by any broken part.





The picture above is not showing me but a Blade F16, sailed by friends. I got out through the same surf a few minutes later, see pic below. I however timed the waves better and avoided the breakers, you can see me about to get airborne over one of those waves in this picture (same location and same day).




I'm not bragging but this is pretty ordinary stuff at my club. Go here to see the pics of sailors going throw the surf in front of our club as recently as yesterday :

http://www.wvzandvoort.nl/70707.html





I personally don't think the F16's are good boats for an event like Tybee. You don't want to do a rally in a porsche carrera. The attention and concentration these boats need to sail them hard makes them too tiring for more then 4 hours of racing. But excellent for 45 minute bouy races. I'm not too sure a F18 is such a good choice for the Tybee either. For the same reasons.





And rightly so. But just race eachother first in wins and both enjoy the match. The boats are too close in overall performance to favour either one in any meaningful sense. Differences in sailor skills will be the deciding factor for sure and that is what first in racing is all about.

Fair winds to you all !

Wouter

thanks for the post. we just did the great texas race for the second year, and this years conditions were definitely more challenging. The surf caused some damage on the boats (we escaped without any damage), and several crews had to make repeated attempts to get out. The formula 18 boats all did well in the race despite the conditions, and I never questioned the integrity of the boat during the race. I would think the formula 18 boat would actually do quite well in the tybee, unless the winds were on the soft side.
As for the f-16, I am sure I will find out soon when Stephen puts it through its paces.

My Taipan has proven to be extremely strong and as able to handle surf as well as any 16 footer.

About 4 years ago Michael Coffman from the Tampa area did a long distance race and did quite well on his Taipan. Anyone recall the details?

The last few regattas I've been getting a lot of complaints about the F16 rating, mostly from A class and also H20. They don't like being beat across the line and owing time to us. The Portsmouth rating will surely come down, although I don't see it reaching the F18 rating here in the States.

The ratings: The method for Portsmouth ratings usually start high then work their way down as more data/more boats roll in. I don't think we've seen the "real" number yet. It will be more like the F18 when it is all said and done. I feel comfortable racing the F18s boat for boat (obviously they will fare better in certain conditions and the F16s will favor other conditions).

My thoughts with distance racing and using Portsmouth are less than enthusiastic, especially distance racing with "straight line" courses (point A to point B in one general direction). The finishes are dependent on boat characteristics (paired with that particular day's weather) rather than all around performance. I don't even think US Sailing counts distance race times in their calculations for indexes.

I read some about the GTR and it sounded like a handful. Congratulations on a great race. Some very beautiful scenery along the way. There is an interesting post on the Distance Forum about proclamations made by certain vendors after the finishes were tallied.

Yep, that picture looks the part !

We never get such high waves over here, but then again we never get long waves neither. By most standards we get relatively modest wave heights but with wavelengths of only 10 mtrs or less (2 boat lengths or less) therefor they are really close to one another and steep. The result of it being a rather shallow body of water which is still (by far) large enough to cause significant disturbance of the water surface.

Will there be a significant F18 segment at the next Tybee you think. That would be fun/interesting to see. I'm still hoping that the F18 segment in tybee will attract more international sailors to this event.

Wouter

He even won it on handicap I believe, but that was also under the very favourable US-DPN system of which we already said that the numbers were bogus anyway.

I think his story is one of the first posts on this forum so it should be possible to dig it up using the search function. It was however mostly a light winds race.

Wouter

who knows who will show up. we all have good intentions, but life has a way of throwing you curves just when you don't expect it.
One can only hope for the best...

Mattman, holy #@$%.... I just looked at the picture. Is that from this year's GT?

You guys sure that was teh GTR? damn looks like HURRICANE! sailing to me <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

HELL NAH! thats when I throw in the towel <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

All systems will be the source of intense dicussion after the race. The US system is based on results and will only start to fall as the class grows and more "good" sailors migrate to the 16. The amount of debate will be even more when using a correction for distance style racing. Here the results are much more condition dependant. i.e. no "performance" boat is ever going to beat a H16 in a distance race whne the course is a high wind reach.

My impression of the 16 so far is that it is pretty comparable to the F18 in most conditions. The boat is at this point no way optimized. Every time out we are learning how to sail it, and have done virtually no rig tuning to date. In the most recent regatta at Daytona we were soundly beaten by Robbie Danniels on a new Cap, but would have corrected out ahead of the Jasons on their new Cap using the portsmouth number system. This despite horrible starts and being upside down at least once. I consider myself a good seat of the pants sailor, not great or technical in any form of the imagination, but we consistantly are mixing it up if not ahead of the F18s on the course. At the JPOR race earlier in the season, straight up boat for boat we would have been second in the I20 class and 1st in the F18 class.

I love the platform and the class concept. I typicaly sail ight so F18 was out of the question for me and my wife. This boat allows us to be mixing it with with these guys anyway. You can argue numbers all you want. The only 2 times i have really felt a disadvantage was in the big chop with light air, and on a deep jib reach. The heavier platforms seemed much less bouncy in the big chop with light air as we could not get a good flow of air across that sails no matter what we tried. As the wind came up, the boat settled down and the advantage went away.

For the big distance stuff, I would not hesitate for a minute to run with my Blade in a T500 type race ---IF there were a fleet. Heads up with the 20 footers in the kind of conditions they typically get, it would be a very, very, very long race.

Matt

The picture was taken by Connie Brown at Full Tilt Photo (www.fulltiltphoto.com) on the last day - final leg - of the GTR. Having had the day off the prior day, we felt refreshed and that was good considering the challenging conditions we faced on this final sprint to the finish. I honestly felt like I was in a washing machine, as the waves were very confused! Good Times...

Macho Man 05 Results
I recall them saying that there was a lot of chop that was slowing them down as compared to the bigger boats.

No, it was not that race--I believe it was way back in 2002 or maybe 2003. It was Coffman's boat (#032); not sure Seth even had his then.

It was waaay back then; I remember the race. I might even have the results somewhere but no time to look for them, maybe later.

He was racing some F18HT's which were still around back then so it was before the 2003 alter cup and 2003 worrell.

Wait a second ......


here it is http://www.catsailor.com/forums/sho...umber=11286&page=77&vc=1

Michaels own race resport of the race

Wouter

That was it--the 2002 RTI; full post below.

http://www.catsailor.com/forums/showflat...=true#Post11286