Kids F12

Another argument I found against trapeze is that is does add cost beyond its direct advantages. Mostly because you have to buy a kids harness which he or she will grow out of very quickly necessitating maybe a new harness 3 years down the line ? These kids do grow at a pretty impressive rate. In the end it is just another thing to buy when a kid starts out sailing these and it all adds up in my opinion.

I figured that it was better to just add a little more width to the platform and hike to get to the same overall performance.

Wouter

RG,

I serious doubt that the cost of a curved traveller is less then a those of a boom. Afterall the later is nothing more then a piece of plain round alu tubing.

The solution to this parent whishes is probably better served by a wishbone boom see picture on a landyacht.

Basically it is a windsurfer boom that is fitted higher up the mast. The wishbone boom can angle downwards towards the clew corner arriving at exactly the same mainsail surface area as a normal boom. This wasn't done on the landyacht as a person is sitting up straight beneath the sail and his head will otherwise be in the way.

The attachment of the wishbone boom is extremely simple. It is just a loop of some high strength line that goes around the mast. A single line at the rear (hook ?) sets the draft and the mainsheet is directly hooked to the sail and not to the boom itself.

It is not even hard to modify a boomed sail to take a wishbone boom. Just have to cut the sleeve open and reinforce it. The rest can remain unaltered.

An additional advantage of the wishbone boom is that the need for a kicking strap or ram vang has been negated. The luff of the sail itself will act as a kicking strap and prevent the boom from rising up to far when the mainsheet is released.

For enthousiasts and designer looking to use old windsurf masts. I have less then encouraging news. I've been trying such masts on this landyacht and found that nearly all plain windsurfer masts are far too flexible and will

pump

in unstable winds which is not a nice behaviour for a landyacht or sailboat. Basically these masts will have to be reinforced to make the stiffer. Inserting a second mast of same taper is one of the ways to achieve this. This does add weight and you will have to open the mast to take the local boom location reinforcing out.

Wouter

My comments on your spreadsheet.

I would like to add a few comments on the

OD F12

in your spreadsheet.

Trapeze/Hiking :

The given 7.00 sq. mtr rig on a 6.00 mtr mast (that is what we all agree upon right ?) will only be able to produce so much heeling moment. The OD F12 will resist this by hiking on a wide platform, while the trapezed F12 will resist this on a trapping on a more narrow platform. You don't win much by trapping on a wide platform, mostly because the rig will then not have you trapping unless the winds are really strong. That was the idea behind the hiking OD F12, just add a little extra beam width to compensate.

From memory I think that my design achieved 2-up trapping F18 equality at 2 mtr wide for a 53 kg crew.

Speed :

From what I know and have seen on the water, many will be surprised about how small the performance difference between a multichined and a round bilge hull will be when all else is the same. We are not talking more then say 3 minutes per hour racing at max here, which is pretty negligiable.

Stability/pitching :

My F12 design was to be fitted with T-foil rudders, especially the deep V-ed keel version. In my opinion this is the most simple and inexpensive way to get excellent pitching behaviour. As per what Darryll did with his F14's, the T-foil rudders use plain kickup rudderstocks. On the F12 the rudders and T-foils will be too small to develop enough force to break off the sterns or stocks anyway. On the Alfa Omega F14 did was already the case. As such the little T-foils are just permanently screwed to the bottom of the rudders. Plain and simple, easily replaced when damaged.

I think these points will increase the points assigned to the

OD F12

a little

Wouter

I added the requested modifications to the spreadsheet. The file should be in your hotmail direction by now. See the

2

sheet. A picture follows attached, so nobody has to wait for the upload.

I'd like to comment (and read other comments) on the features of Phil's Blade 12, as posted in the Open forum:

- The mainsheet and rudder crossbbar setups are great, ideal for kids. This setup should be mandatory.

The dolphin striker receptacle for the freestanding mast is neat, but I like the struts better because the dolphin striker can hit a child's head when righting the boat, while the struts help coming back on board - besides other advantages we already wrote about.

I hate to say it but this part of the design is also 4 years old now :

See below the artist impression I made for Phill Brander in late winter 2003.

Notice the mainsheet setup ?

Phill is going to be really pissed at me, but I'm going to say it anyway. The time has come to actually produce a design and not more artistic impressions. It is great to see Phill has found a new person with much more advanced skills to make these flashy pictures but in the end of the day these are nothing more then a bunch of glowing pixles on a computer screen. It is time to produce detailed cost and weight tallies. Work out the materials used and the individual dimensions of the parts. Many will find that a few more snags are encountered here and will need to be overcome.

I really love how Phills Blade 12 looks and indeed we discussed its OD status as far back as 2003/2004. I was surprising to see Phill come out for a more open class rules based F12 class on this forum knowing he was fully working towards his own OD Blade 12 setup. This is confirmed by his own admission on the main forum. His pod like setup for the unstayed rig will most definately work. The mast design I have presented in this post can be used for his setup without any modification. It appears his mainsail is basically the same area the same as the sail depicted in the photographs (5.5 sq. mtr).

But the flashy picture do mislead people a little bit. The Hulls for example. These

appear

to be scaled down Blade F16 hulls with a rounded keel. Not even Phill himself believes that these can be homebuild without a serious building effort, meaning multi panel construction that is steamed into a rounded shape. Basically these hulls will not be much different in building requirement then the Blade F16 hulls. A multichine hull or even a deep V-ed hull design are much more likely to be chosen eventually and as such it will be much better to show these in the CAD drawings, like RG does. At least then we all see what we are getting into.

Either that or Phill will do best to clarify how exactly these compounded hulls can be made with very simple tooling and small time investment.

It is interesing to note that the OD class rules that I have written up earlier actually do NOT rule out the pod setup that Phill prefers. Basically, in that OD class both the rod and pod setups can be used legally. I would like to stress once more that the OD class rules are not SMOD and that apart from limiting a few design features in a very strickt sense, like the hullshape and the requirement of an unstayed mast, other aspects are left completely open to personal preference. I don't see any reason to not allow design freedom in these ways.

I do really like Phill Blade 12 and I always have, even though I have differed in opinion on some design aspects. But when made well the Blade 12 will be a good design.

Wouter

Luiz,

Your stuff is now uploaded to the website :

http://www.xs4all.nl/~whijink/F12/

direct link is :

http://www.xs4all.nl/~whijink/F12/Comparison_Between_Design_Trends_draft.xls

Wouter

Wouter,

I've posted some pics of a craft that I will build because I think it will work at attracting kids.
My suggestion is that everyone else build what they think is right to capture the imagination of the young.
Hopefully someone will get it right and kids will be drawn to the sport.

BTW:-
I will be posting building pics on my website.
Then people can judge for themselves regarding your claim that I am misleading people.
A picture is worth a thousand words.

Regards,
Phill

I like all your designs, ang I would like to vbuild them all.
But are we not about to forget one thing? The kids were supposed to build their cats? The designes and solutions start to be far to complicated for kids say around 12 to build, even a chained hull is not so straight forward to set up.
I am not an expert in any way in boatbuilding, but I have been working with kids on both wood and metal and my experience is that it has to go fast and change all the time...

Gato,
I have built many boats many different ways.
Provided you have well thought out building instructions the deep V should be the quickest to build.
It should keep the kids interested.

When I post my building pics you will see how much simpler the Blade 12 is to build when compared
to the method used on the 16. And while it will have a lower draft and carry more weight than the V
it would still take a little bit longer to build.

I wish you the best of good fortune and will follow your work in getting these kids involved with great interest.
Good luck.

Regards,
Phill

No war has ever been won when allies are also engaged in fighting among themselves. I think this gave rise to the saying

Divide and Conquer

.

Basically I disagree with the notion that we should all do our own thing and have the market place sort us out. The end result will most likely be that we all fail and waste alot of effort and resources in the proces. More importantly even, we will fail to effectively compete agains designs like the Open Bic and 29-er.

I also think

hoping

is an generally bad strategy.

So the question becomes, are you

in

with the F12 project or are you more interested in doing your own SMOD thing ?

Wouter

Posting in the Open forum may not atract kids, but will certainly atract adult support for the general concept of a kids' cat. It also has the potential to atract support from builders.

I think it is positive to post from times to times some type of

progress report

or

project milestone reaching report

of the kid's cat concept in that (and others) fora, in order to familiarize people with the idea and atract further support.

I call this

internal marketing

and in the current stage it is even more important than normal marketing. And while we are at the subject of atracting support, I am sure that whatever plans Phil has for the Blade, he will also support this cooperative global project as well.

I see no need to press with binary

in or out

choices. As shrinks say, there are many shades of grey between white and black. He may be in and build the boat he likes. If this group does its work well and achieves a smart class with inteligent features and compromises, Phill might decide to change his boat to fit the class. And we may do exactly the same - as I already proposed with the mainsheet and tiller crossbar setup.

Wouter is right when he says that we need internal cooperation to succeed. I would only add that this must not necessarily limit personal initiatives. Things will progress well because we are all intelligent and cooperative enough to manage them without interfering negatively with the group's project. I fully trust this group's participants intentions, capacity and integrity.

Let's keep it going.

There is another thing that it's still worth to think about.
Is there people and clubs out there ready to build their boats, or do they want to buy them ready?
I have been doing some digging here and so far the interest is low for building even if I have promised to be the instruktor for the building for free!!!

If we want to compete with the Optimist, we must prepare to give the

customers

(clubs, organizations and individuals) the

product

they want (complete boats, kits, plans, builders list, etc.).

This requires atracting the big players, smaller professional builders, parts providers, etc. in order to reach all places where Optimists are used.

If it teaches sailing in Optimists, it can teach in a F12

.

I believe it is best to start this work after the boat is defined and the class is minimally organized.

Cool beans RG. <img src=

alt=

/>

Good to see such encouraging developments.

Please, do NOT start with that

Cool Beans

stuff, I'm hearing too much of it already from my 14 yr. old son... <img src=

alt=

/>

I'm new to this internet posting stuff, so please forgive any overreaches in etiquette.

A couple of points. There seems to be some concern as to making these (f-12's) too dangerous. I'm not convinced that this is a real concern. We are talking 12 to 16 year olds here. Has anyone gone and watched 12 year olds racing 80 cc dirt bikes? Karts? Mountain bikes? Sailing is way, way safer. By the time they are 16 they are off the charts. The boats should scare 12 year olds ( a little, somtimes) and by the time they are 16 yrs old they should be a little bored, and be ready for something a little (lot?) quicker/scarier. It seems to me that any of the designs being batted around the site should accomplish this.

The other concern/focus in many ways appears to center on the SMOD vs OD vs very simple formula debate. This seems a tough nut to crack. In my experience in other sports, I tend to support simpler rules that allow more experimentation. The concerns are of course (though this is of concern in all the formulas, just to a lesser or greater extent) the risk of an

arms race

leading to higher and higher costs. Has anyone mentioned yet using a

claimer

rule to help stop this behavior.

For those not familiar with the concept. A

claimer

rule (these go by different names) works basically as follows. F12 boats should cost under 3000 Euros. Basically, any competitor can buy anyone else's boat at an event for a nominally higher fee. Say 3500 Euros. What sort of fool will spend 4000 Euros extra on his kids carbon hulls, when dad #2 can buy his

overvalued

F12

special

for 3500 euros.

This works remarkably well in all sorts of motorsports where cheating is endemic. You see it especially in kids stock car racing where, for example, cars are supposed to cost less than $500. They have a $1000 claim rule. Everybody

runs what they brung

, and costs stay relatively low.

I think a claimer rule would also help in SMOD and OD classes, as it would help limit the super-richies from upping the ante all the time.

This is further supported because (from what I have been able to read, anyhow) trying to spend money on the boat to make the thing faster is not nearly as effective as learning how to sail better. If your super expensive F12 special is just going to get claimed away, you might as well sail it stock, and learn to sail better.

Just a few thoughts.

Love the concept of F12 for the kids. I live in a place where there is no sailboat racing, and not that much recreational sailing (lots of power and PWC's though...). I might build one of these things for the kid though. I like the low cost, and the idea that they still go fast enough to get em excited with sail as opposed to power.

thanks

There is always a faster boat...even in one design...to have the

claimer

rule would just allow the more wealthy to buy the fastest boat at any given race...they would let someone else do the work and step in with a fat wallet and buy the fastest...you would make it easier for them, not harder.

Try explaining that to your kid who poured his heart and soul into building a boat… only to have daddy big bucks walk away with his pride and joy. The whole idea that you can keep the wealthy from buying speed is a false premise...even in one design they can buy a new boat every year of less if they so desire. The majority here are always saying that it is the nut behind the tiller, not the boat that matters…if you truly believed that…this topic of conversation would not constantly be in the fore front of nearly every discussion on class rules or boat design/construction.

Regards,
Bob

Cool Beans, Cool Beans, Cool Beans,....
OK, now I'll try to restrain myself. <img src=

alt=

/>

What is all this stuff about a war? You trying to claim credit for everything F12 is hardly a war unless you consider your ego as the combat zone... <img src=

alt=

/>

I'm not claiming

credit for everything F12

, just the right to (commercially) use anything related to F12 even when contributed by others and the exclusive rights to my own design and to the class name and structure. The latter being largely the result of my work over the last 18 months as well.

There is definately a difference here !

At some point the rights need to be concentrated in one entity; otherwise growing the class and enforcing the class rules will be pretty much a impossible task. Some blowhards immediately equate this to dictatorship, but then again it is always easy to just blabber away without actually investing any time or money in the project.

I'm just interested in making this F12 project a succes and it is a rare occurance when a committee succeeds at something like this. They called me a dictator in the F16 class as well, and right now I'm not even a F16 class official anymore. Still the F16 class was succesfully launched internationally where many other miserably failed (Taipan class ?). Sometimes, if you want to get results, you just have to trust people.

Additionally, creating and building up a new class to critical mass takes literally 1000's of manhours. I think the F16 class costed me just over 4000 manhours in total over 5 years time. Don't you think that earns a person some ownership rights to the class ? If a company wants that kind of investment from me then they have to shell out at least some 60.000 Euro's in net pay. You bloody nitwit !

And I sure as hell am not going to spend the equivalent of 60.000 Euro's on the F12 class and have others walk away with the credit and earnings. That would make me a right fool.

Wouter

Welcome to the forums carlito. Look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Note that not everyone involved in F12 is targeting 12+. Some are focused on the under-12 kids.

Its a good thing the disclaimer has absolutly no standing legal strength at all then, don't worry I checked it out.

Any wonder topics have moved to the open forum.

When your talking about engaging people to build boats for lots of kids under and over 12 years old, I don't think there is much commercial value. The value is from getting kids on the water then if they move on to serious competition as a young adult you can hope to sell them a serious boat.
I've ordered my first F12 kit and its not from someone claiming ownership of the F12 concept so sue me.

So your boat is not an F12 then, is it ?

We are still deciding with all people here (including you) on how the F12 design and F12 class will look like.

The guy who sold you your kit hasn't cross referenced it with us here, for all we know it may well violate one of the F12 class rules that still need to be finalized. If that happens then you are out of luck.

Apart from that you are free do to what you want.

And this is exactly why the rights claim was written down. We don't want every Harry, Dick and Tom to call their contraptions a F12, muscle in on the promotion done by others and confuse the wider public.

The F12 design will be what is decided upon on this forum, not what some

split off designer

thinks it should be. Any other design will most likely not be allowed in the class later on.

Who says so ? Well I say so ! And after putting in all those hours already I have every right to do so. On whose activities was this F12 forum started for example ?

Besides, distractors like yourself frustrated the F12 project last februari as well and when pushed came to shoove we couldn't dependent on these guys to do anything but complain all the time. So forgive me from considering this a passed station. Now, if any of you feels uncomfortable with me claiming rights to this F12 project then you are strongly invited to buy a Hobie rotomoulded boat, start your own class or just generally refrain from commenting. You had your chance to replace me as project leader several times , I even renewed that offer 2 weeks ago and there are simply no other takers (again).

So you are stuck with me (unless you want no F12 at all) and I'm not going to do all that work without coming away with some rights. Of course owning these rights still doesn't mean that I'll charge everybody for it. It just means the control of the project and class is well defined. Something that is important for a succesful launch of the class.

Wouter

Wouter you may want to get the latest issue (December/January) of Professional Boat Builder Magazine and read the article

A Primer on Patents

located on page 118.
Anyone can

claim

anything they want...you can fly over here to the US, stick a flag in the ground and declare it

Wouterland

but that does not mean you can enforce your claim in a court of law.

I understand to a point you wanting to be compensated for the time you put into this, or any other class...but what about all the other people who have contributed ideas and time? Blowing them off as being useless because they didn’t meet your narrow view of how it should be done doesn’t negate the value of their ideas. Their time is just as valuable as yours… If you are compensated, it only stands to reason that they should be too. How far do you take this? What is the real reason for the existence of an F12? It is looking like it is less and less about the kids all the time…

Regards,
Bob

You guys still don't understand do you ! ... And you probably never will, but here goes.

Without building a strong organisation around the F12 there will be no F12 class, just a bunch of amateurs fiddling around. We had that for 40 years now and no viable youth class was ever established for catamarans. You think there is a correlation here.

With regard to patents, nobody is asking for patents. Hell the laser dinghy can't not be patented in anyway, neither can the succesfully lay claim to the name Laser. But all that pretty irrelevant as you can' participate in any of the Laser class events unless you own a boat that is officially recognized by the class and a court of law can do absolutely nothing about that. There is no law that forbids an organisation from excluding you from the class if you do not satisfy the limits set in their class rules. Basically, legal jumbo is irrelevant.

You guys are all over the place and have no focus.

With a class hierarchy (and that includes laying the ownership rights somewhere) we simply don't have a class. If a design doesn't have a class then that design (and the concept associated with it) has a negligiable chance of succeeding.

All you guys are doing right now (contributions ?) is tearing the project apart like a bunch of wolves. And when it fails because of it we can all be very proud of ourselves that another opportunity was lost for a viable entry c.q. youth cat class again.

That is what we are talking about here. If I was getting off on power and control then I sure as hell wouldn't waste my time on creating a new sailing class. Such is project is more pain then it is really worth and I'm doing it because I can and I feel there is a need for it, call it passion.

For it to succeed I need control, I need to be able to control the creation of the class, its growth and the money flow so I can reinvest portions of it into the class. THIS IS ALL FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CLASS WE ARE CREATING.

I'm intending to use the money earned to fund the class organisation and sell the more expensive components against cost. I'm going for advantages of production on scale. It will be alot cheaper and more performant if the class designs and orders the mast sections and then sells it on to the sailors. For alu extrusions there is a minimal batch size of 250 to 500 kg. That is 30-60 F12 masts in one go with a upfront investment of several thousant bucks. If there is no control then I can't justify some private party of investing in this as the risks of you guys running around for alternatives makes this economically very risky. Same with sails, rudders, etc.

Then the so called contributions. Most are of the form :

Hey, why not have only 1 rule that regulates overall length and everything else goes ?

Like that the best we can achieve is Grob coming with a 100 kg rotomoulded F12, Retired Geek with a 50 kg all carbon foiling F12, Phill with an underpowered F12 and Wouter with a 60 kg F12 made from commonly available materials and having a more crude deep V-ed hull.

What do you will happen we we go to some national sailing association to make them aware of our F12 youth class and ask for their support ? They will laugh us out of the room so hard that it will hurt for years to come. And to top it off we have ones again confirmed to the mono guys that cat sailors are crazed lunies that disagree amonh themselves so much that can't even get one thing like a simple class right.

F12 was always intended to be more then just what a private persons wants for his personal situation. It is intended to because the international youth class for catamaran sailing (and not for some local aussie sailing club project) and a feeder class to the currently existing international cat classes like the H16's, A's, F16's, F18's and Tornado's.

Also guys like Phill, Paul and Wouter have spend several thousand of bucks (out of their own pocket) to get the F16 class up and going. I for one will never see any of that back again. Phill has his building fees to recouperate some of his costs. I get posters dissing me for something they could never do or are even willing to do themselves. Maybe, you all should compare your

hey, what if ...

postings and drawings to persons actually putting in the time and money to work out the details of each design, build it and build the class.

Now I'm going to do another class creations project, I'm one of the very few who can and who is evem willing to do it.

Now are going to help me make this a success or not ?

Wouter

Wouter, I think the lack of clarity over the rights issue is compounded by a lack of clarity over the project status, and even over who exactly is on board and to what extent. I see a number of issues come up in discussion here reflecting different views on what seem to be fairly fundamental issues - target age & weight, OD or Formula, stays or not, trapeze or not, multiple sail sizes, boards or boardless etc etc - and of course in the process of developing the class concept it's perfectly fine that these debates should occur and different ideas get proposed. The problem is that I don't see these issues getting clearly resolved to a point where there is a well-defined core group of people who reach agreement and move on. I do see your own views very plainly and consistently expressed, but it's not clear to me how much of this has broad acceptance and how much is your contribution to debates that are still ongoing. Maybe the people actively participating in the class development have a clearer view than I do, but just as an interested observer here the picture seems quite cloudy.

My suggestion is that perhaps on a weekly basis you post a project status note on the forum, defining exactly the current state of what has been agreed (and perhaps by who) and listing the open issues currently under discussion. Over time this should help keep the project moving forwards towards a more and more well-defined state and avoid having to revisit old issues. Perhaps each open issue could spawn a separate thread that runs till agreement is reached and the issue is closed.

I think your point about the need for the class to have a point of control somewhere is reasonable, but it only makes sense if what you have control of is well-defined.

Wouter you don't get it, youve missed the group with the greatest need and growth potential the under 12's we need them bobbing around next summer, we already have F14 for teenagers.
Wouter the reason all these good looking boats came about was you posting your square design.
The person I'm getting my kit from contributed to this forum and it will be F12.

You just can't stand the fact that people are actually looking at designs from boat/yacht designers and couldn't really give a [censored] that it should beat a laser by 2.1553672 minutes around the course.

First you say that you can buy your mast section at any aluminium retailer, but then want to re-invest portions of any incomings to fund 500kg worth of masts.

Jeff and I are building the same design, we want the boats out there sailing around, not continually comparing them to a laser in yet some other mathematical formula on paper.

And I don't know if you realise how stupid it looks when you poke and prod at obviously successful boat designers to try an extract information that they obviously don't wish to share with you at this time, especially when they have to put up with you, guessing, assuming and then dumping on there creation.

Yes, of course. Again, life is not a binary yes or no: some will help a lot, some will help less, some may go overboard and some may involuntarily work in the wrong direction. Besides the shades of grey, expect to see

whiter

and

blacker

situations <img src=

alt=

/>

As far as I know, you are the only person ever who successfully created a class through an Internet discussion group. Please do it once again. I am sure everyone understands the difficulty to do it in a foreign language, being at the same time precise, polite, subtle, etc.

In order to avoid repetitive suggestions from those who want to help, but are unaware of the current project status (it happened to me more than once), the proper reply is

we passed this point already

followed by the project's program/milestones. Do we have one? If not, I'll try to prepare the first draft.

All the best,