Nacra F16 pics

Looks great, I heard a few will be racing here in a few months.

Very interesting. I know we have a few real engineers on the board, question for them: Are strakes considered 'fast'? I always thought 'smooth' was faster than bumps.

To me they look more like added drag if/when you push them into the water. The Wildcat has them too, right? So, are they supposed to be functional, ie. external hull stiffeners, or just for looks, or...?

Also, the mast is black so it's hard to tell if it's aluminum or carbon, which is it? And the transom looks very flat across the bottom, so it should be good for going fast downwind, lots of volume in the back, not so much in the bows, which surprises me. I thought the bows would be fuller like the Infusion.

I hope we see a few at Tradewinds in two months!

The rounded hull profiles are really sucking the water up and over the deck. Water hitting beams and hardware is drag (I used to hate how the water smacked the front beam on the N20 when sailing at good speed in waves). The strakes should help keep some of that water from rounding the top of the deck and might make the boat a little drier to sail...but I think they're mostly for looks.

It looks a lot more like the Falcon than the Viper that's for sure. I too am surprised at the volume, or it could be looks too.

Really low volume in the sterns too.

I'm shocked to see a double trapped spin reach. I'm not sure I'd do that with my mast, at least not two adults.

Two mast is aluminium btw. and apparently weights around 125kgs.
I do like the race layout, hope that is standard.

This angle shows the front beam pretty far back with a fair amount of volume. Hulls look pretty wide and flat about 18" before the front beam to the ream beam. Healthy amount of rocker in the other photo.

I wonder when they are going to put it on their site?

Who has ordered one? Who knows someone who has ordered one? I keep hearing that

several

are sold, but there's no names...

Looks like an Infusion and an A-cat had a baby!

Is it just me or does the spin pole tip seem like it is way up in the air?

Class max spin pole length and max spinny luff gives a high up pole which gives lots of lift at speed, its all good and most F16's have gone this way.

Probably using a smaller spin cut like the Viper's sail plan. Watching the AC45s do the speed trials in San Diego, I now understand how a smaller chute can be faster (speed)....don't know relative to VMG on a truly leeward mark. The speed trial was set up with a 135 wind direction.

BTW, the 3rd fastest was Bundy running without a spin and squeezing the pins at both ends. I wonder if Oracle had only 1 small spin available for the speed trial? All of the rest had large chutes. One even tried the larger chute without the jib.

maybe you know who <img src="<>/smile.gif" alt="smile" title="smile" height="15" width="15" />

I know of four being sold to one of our clubs, they will use them to train youths.

It fits one of the controversial specs for the Olympic Cat.

Definitely not a designer, but Martin Fisher is, couple of interesting articles from him on the Wild cat and those rails on the bow. Does it work? Some of the Volvo boats tried it as well.
http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-hobie-f18wild-cat-bow-rails-in.html

http://catsailingnews.blogspot.com/2010/05/cs-interview-martin-fischer.html

Hasn't really proven faster in the F18's but it is hard to pinpoint that on the boat-fast sailors can win on most any well tuned platform. Its also hard to make that statement without data collected on a boat with strakes and one without that are otherwise identical in nature and sailed in a large variety of conditions with equal caliber sailors on board.

Strakes or no strakes, the design looks fast and well thought out, hope to see one stateside!

Interesting interview with Mr. Fisher. Thanks for the link. Here's the part about the bow strakes:

What´s the story behind this extreme bow-rails concept?
MF: The idea is to force the bow wave to detach from the hull at a certain point. Thus the bow rail reduces the dynamical wetted surface.
The bow rail concept came as a result of the numerical simulations k-epsilon did on the project. The results showed, that the bow rails reduce the overall drag, it they are properly placed and if they have the right size. Without numerical simulations I never would have dared pursuing this path.
The raked bow is simply to reduce wetted surface and to reduce the windage of the windward hull.
(CS- Check post of January 2009 on Wildcat rails, actually Martin told me he read that post at the time and was that glad I didn´t say it was for generating

lift

or solely for strenght as expressed in many other forums..)
CS-More volume is the way to go in the class looking at latest designs, one main characteristic of the Cap, that was addresed with their new C2, was margin to push hard downwind (this even said by AHPC) the Wildcat seems to have more volume than the Capricorn, but still hasn´t the same margin as say , the Infusion or Shockwave. -This is a compromise you decided to stand (reduced bow volume compared to Infusion)? as opposed to excel upwind?
MF:During the development of the boat we also tested wider shapes.
The results of the RANSE simulations, however, showed, that there was a drag penalty especially upwind if we were going for wider hulls.
After discussion with Hobie and with some of the top sailors we decided to go for a moderately wide shape. The idea behind it is that many regattas are decided on the first windward leg, so being quick upwind pays in general.