Is it time to kick Macca into touch.

[/nzbash]Pepin, your not providing the right atmosphere that Wayne is comfortable with. Now you have to keep this between us...

first your going to need some supplies...

gum boots
velcro gloves
lipstick - ruby red
barry white cd's
blow up sheep.. preferably black.

If you can find a deserted paddock that would be ideal.

yeah thats right, NZ where the men are men and the sheep are nervous!!![/nzbash]

Now i have that off my chest <img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

I only posted the utube of greg because wouter keeps going around saying

i dont know where these prices are coming from

and

i hope its not a manufacturer saying this

well wouter now you know.

Dazz
Choosing to build a high volume hull was a design and marketing decision on Greg’s part. One might say the Viper is, in essence, a length compressed (rather than globally scaled down), modified F18 Capricorn, or a for lack of a better description, a stubby F18. His design path proves to be fast in capable hands (as is the Blade & Falcon). To me this is not a drawback, but one of the beauties of the box rule...it lets Greg or anyone else for that matter, explore the design limits of the F16 within the box rules even if they do not take advantage of maximizing the platform in all areas.

Choosing to make the boat well above the minimum weight and asking for the rules to change is little different than someone making an F16 16.8% longer than the box rule (which is arrived at by dividing 125kg Viper weight by the 107Kg minimum box rule weight, which would translate to 5m X 1.168 or 5.84m /19’-2” length boat) and wanting the rule on length to be increased to accommodate one builder. This, despite the fact that the rest of the boat building community has designed and built F16's to the stated 5m rule. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would propose such a change in length, so why is weight any different?

Greg knew the rules before he designed the Viper and consciously designed outside the optimum parameters, obviously he felt the increase in volume would offset the disadvantage of the increased weight. Only Greg knows his production costs and what he needs to charge to make a profit...it may very well cost him more than an

A

cat (although after listening thru the video twice I didn't hear him put a specific dollar amount on it). That does not change the fact that other builders are building F16 catamarans within the rules that are at, or very close to minimum weight at a reasonable price....some 15K (US dollars) less than the proposed $35K price that is being thrown about. Leave the rules alone!

In fact the F16 class rules were set at 107 kg minimum weight to allow AHPC's preceding product, the Taipan 4.9 in F16 attire, to be a full compliant F16 on weight. The Taipan was in fact a foundation boat of the class and so it would do no good in forcing it to carry 15-25 kg of lead to be compliant)

We made the class rules in 2001 and the Viper was launched in 2007. No-one can't blame the class founders for not having consulting the

cristal ball

.

Additionally, I regulary get a chuckle out of realizing we first needed to lower the class weight to accomodate an AHPC product only to be faced with a request to raise it in favour of another AHPC product.

Obviously we (or AHPC) can't have it both ways.

Wouter

Thread drift, this is an Aussie bashing thread not a kiwi bashing one!

I don't agree with Macca on F16 weights, I sail solo and the weight issue is a practical one when launching, recovering and righting. It's just a hunch, but I guessing increasing the minimum weight would make the boat much less attractive as a uni platform.

But don't ban him because you don't agree, just ignore him if you have to. It's pretty obvious he's throwing stuff out to see who's going to bite most of the time. Can be quite entertaining! It's like a sailing version of the classic Aussie cricket tactic of 'sledging'!

....Mark Waugh standing at second slip, the new player (Adam Parore) comes to the crease playing & missing the first ball. Mark -

Ohh, I remember you from a couple years ago in Australia. You were [censored] then you're [censored] useless now

. Parore- (Turning around)

Yeah, that's me & when I was there you were going out with that old, ugly [censored] & now I hear you've married her. You dumb [censored]

.

One for Dazz

How do you stop 100 Aussie men dead in their tracks. One bark from an Aussie Sheila

Hale and Pace came out to Australia for a tour (one of my favorite British comedy duo's)

Hale: Us British gave you Australian's Cricket.... and what did you give us?????

Pace: A flogging!

Hale looks at Pace oddly!

well it cracked me up <img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

Bet the Americans don't get that one

What's ay hindu

Lays eiggs a bro <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

Another classic cricket sledge + even better response:

After Brandes played & missed at a McGrath delivery, the Aussie bowler politely enquired:

Oi, Brandes, why are you so fat?

Cos every time I f**k your wife she gives me a biscuit,

Brandes replied.

I like that one not sure about the less PC one above.

I always though the sheep and wellington gumboots jokes were aimed at the Welsh, must have been away from NZ too long. <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

.....but not long enough to lose the accent, Wayne?? <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

Have you measured those end plugs yet? <img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

Who is this Macca guy that everyone always talks about?

Cmon Mathew you really must know who Macca is, you know the guy we keep talking about, the fountain of all knowledge, the Messiah who keeps trying to direct us away from our evil class weight limits, wake up boy and keep up. <img src="<>/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin" height="15" width="15" />

http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/2010/05/cs-interview-andrew-mac-pherson.html

Congratulations on your performance at Alter Cup. I just wish there was an Olympic boat for you and Taylor to graduate to.

Thanks Pete. Yea, I wish there was too. And I wish there was college cat sailing. <img src="<>/smirk.gif" alt="smirk" title="smirk" height="15" width="15" /> Still don't know who he is. lol

Interesting..
Pete Pollard posted a link to an interview with Macca, in which he says the following :

CS - You also race on M20s, are (with the F20) boats to compare in performance?
Are you crewing the F20 at the Texel Round?
Andrew: The M20 is really a different boat to the Nacra, the costs to build a M20 like the Nacra (jib, curved foils) are more than 40k EURO!!
And now the top M20’s are sporting 3.55m wide beams with no dolphin striker!
In performace the M20 should be faster but in reality its not a huge amount and certainly not 15k Euro quicker! I love sailing the M20, it’s a fantastic boat and a technical wonder, but its jus not a realistic option for 95% of people

.
I find this quite an eye-opener, he says that the 15K Euro additional expense doesn`t make the M20 much faster than the Nacra F20, yet he feels quite strongly that the ultimate F16 slayer (that has not been built) will be MUCH faster than the current down-to weight boats. While I don`t disagree in theory with him, I find his

dual citizenship

on the subject quite interesting..
I also find that he feels that such a boat would not be

a realistic option for 95% of people

, yet he feels that 'the ultimate F16' will make all others in the class obsolete.
By that logic the M20 will make the Nacra F20 obsolete, which Macca seems to not be too concerned about, whereas he should be, being a Nacra employee/representative, rather than being overly concerned with a class in which his employer is not involved.
Am I missing something here ?
Another thing I find very interesting is that he continually denied any connections with any manufacturer not too long ago, yet this interview brings out some other news - that he has been involved with Nacra in one way or another since 2007.
I guess honesty is not part of the code of conduct for professional sailors, if it doesn`t help them sell their sponsors products.

Also interesting to read Martin Fischer`s opinion on the weight of the F18s (He designed the Capricorn and the Wildcat), in context of his choice for the next Olympic catamaran :

I think 18 ft with a beam of 2.5 m would be a good choice. Transport is much easier than with a wider boat and such a boat would be significantly cheaper than a 20-ft boat. I would also like to see the weight come down a bit, but not to extreme levels. I reckon a weight of around 140 kg would be a good compromise between performance and cost.

http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/2010/05/cs-interview-martin-fischer.html
Seems he disagrees with Macca on the weight issue, if he believes 140kg would be a good weight for an 18ft, not a 16ft boat.. but then he is only a designer with more degrees than a bar full of catsailors..

Am I missing something here ?

Nope. You're spot on.

Like all good politicians, Macca is the duplicitous king of spin of the Catamaran Sailing Forums. Like all good politicians though it eventually always ends up in tears.

An interesting thing was written by Tiapanfc a fellow Aussie sailor in the birthday wishes thread

Happy birthday Macca. Hope to see a great year ahead for you on the F16!

Not wanting to read too much into this but will Macca contest a few F16 events this year on a Nacra manufactured boat. <img src="<>/cool.gif" alt="cool" title="cool" height="15" width="15" />

As I said before I believe the Nacra 500 is F16 compliant for a solo sailor...

The basic idea is pretty simple really.

Create as much chaos and mayhem as possible, turning potential new class members / F16 sailors away. Slow our growth and hope enough of the mud sticks as to eventually see us buckle at the knees.

Of course we have been playing that game for over 8 years now and we still keep growing.

As I said before I have no idea why they think they can be successful at it.

Wouter

Steve, its pretty simple: The Nacra F20 makes the M20 obsolete, because its cost effective and one design. The M20 owners have always been outside the group when it comes to creating a class. When have you seen more than 3 M20s with the same spec at a regatta? The Nacra F20 had a bigger fleet at its first event and it would have been bigger if the containers were faster. So the F16 group have to decide if they are a bunch of boat fiddlers like the M20 guys (i love that stuff too) or if you want a class that races? (on the water, not the interweb..)

Macca its pretty simple really Nacra + one design = monopoly ergo ripped off when it comes to spare parts and updates.

e.g 11.000 USD for a nacra I20 carbon mast.

the smart money says history will repeat itself yet again.

I agree with Dazz on this, I don't know who at Nacra is the

problem

but when I had an I20 some of us wanted to get an owner's class going, but Nacra wouldn't allow us any input when it came to the rules of the class. Their attitude was,

Here's the boat, here's the new changes to the boat, now, you can buy them from us, or you can -not- race in

our

class...

(I am refering specifically to when they added the self tacking jib kit and the 'new' tramps several years ago) We the owners wanted to vote on what new changes should be allowed, and not allowed, but Nacra would have none of it. You played (and paid) by their SMOD rules, or you didn't race with them.

140 kg is a tad over the B2 class levels......

That class was developed around the same time as the Mozzie..

Well at least they were more open about than they used to be- ess pretending to

poll

and take a vote from all the owners of the

class

before making any changes. Only problem was- every change the factory wanted was always approved and no one seemed to be able to find any of this elusive owners who had gotten polled and had voted

for

the changes! As I mentioned in another post- that is their (and Hobie's) business model- SMOD classes controlled by the manufacturer- either openly or covertly.

Kirt