I am selling my Hobie 18 Magnum and I have noticed a couple of NACRA 18 Square's in my area for sale at a reasonable price.
Can anyone give me ANY information on the 18 Square. I know nothing about them and I have only seen them in pictures.
Hi, I owned an 18 square way back in the 1980's. I'm assuming you're talking about the same boat; single hander with a giant main and widely spaced hulls (don't remember how wide, but it seemed bigger than 8' 6"). This boat was a riot! The only thing faster on our little lake up here in Canada were the Tornado's (which is what I have now). I know from info gathered on this site that there are some interesting new boats around (single handed with spinnaker, etc.), but if you have a line on a used boat, I don't see how you'll regret buying it.
Cheers
Al
The 18 Square Meter-class catamaran is built to a box rule limiting hull length to 18 feet, beam to WIDE (I think it's 11 feet) and sail area (including mast) to 18 square meters, or about 193 sq. feet. A few very early ones were built with Nacra 5.2 hulls, but when the 5.5 became available, its 18-ft hulls were closer to the max allowed than the 5.2's 17-ft. ones.
The majority of Squares in this country (and I would imagine the world) are Nacras. They were (are?) available from the factory, and no end of modifications have been made to them. The great beam makes transporting them difficult; you need either a tilt trailer or to disassemble the boat and haul it on a narrow(er) trailer. There seems to be a revival of them here in Texas right now; I know of half a dozen that are either raced regularly or in the process of being restored. Also, there's a guy in the Houston area that built one from scratch which is scary-fast in light air, and when he goes to the trapeze, forget it-nobody can touch him upwind and only the spin boats have a prayer downwind. He always corrects out anyway.
Good luck...I'd love to have a Square (when I grow up, maybe I'll have TWO boats: a Square for buoy racing and my P-19 for distance racing!)
sail fast
One of the best sailing boats I ever owned! Pain to transport. go for the tilt trailer. When I was 18 I could assemble mine in 30 minutes....but when I sold my last one in 1996 at 33 it took more like an hour. The boat goes like hell upwind, it is a match for ANY boat in a good breeze to the upwind mark. I own a NACRA 6.0 now but still have dreams of that square going upwind. Been thinking of offering to buy my old one back and putting a hooter or something on it to get it fast downwind.