Viper in Belgium next weekend?

Well he wasn't at the Diamond cup last weekend. But the boat is still in our club, so I suppose we'll have 2 F16 sailing in Belgium coming weekend...

Hi Gill,

Stephan Dorfner was sailing close to us at one stage, at Round Texel 2008.
That reminds me, can you send me the gps tracks from both race day's in mumbles?
Good luck next week-end!

Geert

Gill

was disapointing not to see the viper in action in some breeze. But wow what a great weekend.

Aido

It's good to here that the party on Saturday made up for not sailing 🙂

I hope the Viper will be sailing this weekend.

I didn't ask, but how would you compare speed/direction downwind between the normal and small rig infusion last Sunday? Were you able to sail as deep as the others?

Gill

Gill,

We had 130 kgs crew wieght on the f18 so we had to sail small rig. IMO it does a pretty good job of evening things out. We found we could climb slightly higher than the other boats upwind but not as fast. Reckon it worked out to be about even in that direction. Downwind about the same as well. Unable to match the speed of the heavier crews when sailing hot tho.

Definetly makes the boat easier to control for a lighter crew and it did get quite windy in the last race.

Hey Aido, I didn't know the Nacra infusion has a small rig. Can you elaborate a little on this? Is it a smaller mast? Sorry, I've heard a lot of good things about a nacra infusion but never thought about being able to sail one because my crew and I always thought we were too small ie 140kgs, but if we move back to the states, we'd certainly be looking at the infusion if we can actually sail on competitively.

I might get in trouble for talking about the F18 here...

Its part of the f18 class rules that crews under 140 kg have to use a small jib and spinniker. 3.45 m2 jib and 19m2 kite. Mainsail and mast are the same. I am suprised to find out that it works quite well.

The one problem is however that after 4 races in 15-20 kts we barely had the energy to pull the big heavy beast up the beach after the racing. You would have to be fit if you did it all the time. Or you would end up fit quite quickly. Wouldn't be so much of a problem at 140 Kgs crew wieght tho.

The F18 rule requires small crew to use a smaller jib and kite, same mast and main.

Edit: wow I must have taken a long time to write that sentence

totally agreed, the 180kg boat to pull up, especially where i sail where we sometimes have to pull the boat through mud, would be a killer. My best purchase to date has been the euro trax.

Lets not forget that somebody still has to saw the mainsheet on that 17 sq. mtr. by 8.60 mtrlarge head (=high leech tension) mainsail. On the F16's we can get by with 8:1 and 7:1 with the F18's favouring as general setup the 10:1 and 9:1. To give an idea of the difference in mainsheet loads.

As a result I wonder a little bit about how competitive a 130 kg crew truly is on a F18. I admit that the differences between the F18 and F16 are not big (apart from boat weight), but things tend to add up.

And to all. I see no problem talking F18 or even A-cat, F17, Tornado and F20 here. This has never been an issue in the past except for one particular periode earlier this year. But back the intent of such discussion was alot less honourable. Personally, I strongly favour getting back to the open feel of before that time; together with the open discussions about everything with at least some link to F16. We discussed Ben Halls solid wing on his A-cat at length, we discussed the changes the the F17 and we sure as I don't know what discussed everything interesting that happened in the F18 class. So Aido by all means go ahead; no problem as long as the underlaying intent is honourable. And I'm sure in your case it is ! <img src=

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Wouter

Aido, do you have any problems uprighting the F18 at 130kg?

Call me wimpy but I feel like the 8:1 system on the F16 is often not powerful enough to be hand holding and playing the mainsheet upwind by the skipper. Maybe I should try a 10:1 on my f16

I haven't had to try yet...but i guess it would largly depend on the conditions. I capsized a tiger in about 4 kts on a near windless lake once. We had a touch under 150 kilos on board and the only way we could get it up was to have the crew stand on my shoulders with both of us leaning out hard on the capsize rope. And it still only just came up. I've had the same troubles with our Hobie 16.

I think you could probably pull up an F18 with about 15kts of breeze and a few waves at 130. It defintely wouldn't be easy tho and impossible in light air. Maybe one of those righting poles or water bags are the answer???

And that is why F16 2-up crews are also seperating the tasks of steering and sheeting over the skipper and crew.

Personally, I dislike the slow response of the 10:1 system so I stay with 7:1, but indeed you can give it a try. Luckily for the F16 crews their is a possibility to upgrade to 10:1, for lightweight F18 crews (were 10:1 is already a standard) there isn't much upgrading potential left. The next thing will be a fully multi cascading mainsheet system like some of the Tornado crews use.

I think the F16 design got a bit lucky here. We envisioned first that we could stick to inexpensive 6:1 systems but with the introduction of the large tops we too had to upgrade. Our luck was that it appears to settle to 7:1 and 8:1 systems that are still commonly available, relatively simple and not too expensive. So we could stay with the concept of a fast well balanced racing boat for a very attractive quote. I'm very happy we limited the masts to 8.5 mtr as well; resulting in 8.1 mtr max luffs. The current F16 rig is about what a 125 kg crew can still manage very well in all conditions; but it is at the very max due to the large heads increasing the leech/mainsheet loads. So we can still satisfy our initial design goals; just !

Wouter

I've just tapered my mainsheet (well MarkP's business partner did the hard work) and I have now gone to a 8:1 system with my new GP mainsail.

I have also tapered my main at the GC and can now easy sheet without cleating with a 8:1 main. Tapering makes a big difference.
I also think 8:1 gives more control and my ideal situation is the crew doing the main at 8:1....

Concerning the F18, I had the idea that Aido was keeping up well with most of the other F18 (Ofcourse he is used sailing mixed while most of the other mixed crews weren't because most of them sail with 2 men).
Again, most will depend on the skills...

Gill

We have plenty of experience righting a F18 with 135 kg (not 130) in all sorts of conditions: from hardly any wind in flat water right up to beaufort 6 in building seas. Righting is not the problem. In fact we often succeed in having the lighter crew climbe on the lower hull while righting so that she does not have to pull herself out of the water.

However, getting back on board is a different thing, especially after a second nosedive...... <img src=

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