Taipan vs. Nacra17

Personally I think that rightability should be defined as the ability to right a boat unaided in all conditions.

Yes I agree good point.
So that's not the case with the N17?

You will have no problems righting any of the singlehanded catamarans in any given condition !

With this weight I would advice that you can a custom mainsail made for your bodyweight. A standard mainsail will leave you wanting in the saildrive.

Wouter

Yes or maybe a longer boat? But the F18's are lead heavy.. What would you suggest?

Interesting thread,
about the bodyweight - we sail smaller 16ft boats, less sail area and narrower than Blade with less hull volume, basically looks like a 16ft scaled-down Tornado with old style mainsail (pinhead), only 12,45sqm sail area (main).
Wouter would say that a 90kg sailor would need a fuller-cut mainsail to give more drive, yet in anything over 12knots it is the heavy guys who sail fastest, granted they are the better of our class, but when sailing solo against the sloops Kevin recently won a 2 hour race by a large margin, he does have a bit more luff-curve which gives him the power he needs but that is very easy to acchieve provided your boat`s class-rules allow it, so confirm that before you choose boats.
If you have the choice to buy either boat, get the one which has the most number of good sailors in your area if you want to race, it`s that simple.

Steve

Longer boat is certainly not required. F16 are raced doublehanded with a crew weigth ranging from 115 kg to 155 kg, your 95 is still ways of that. James Sage (also about 95 kg) raced the Taipan uni in several championships and won. I assume the other boats are not much different in this respect. However, I'm sure James did have a custom sail made as the Taipan rules allow that. Certainly not all classes allow that, Taipan and F16 class do.

That was my serious answer, my non serious answer ist that Florida has a guy that singkehands a Nacra Inter 20 ! So who are you to skipped the option of singlehanding an F18 ?

Wouter

The only problem he has is that he doesn't have enough hands to control all of the lines at the same time. Transitions are difficult for him (but he's hanging in there...)

You can single hand an open 60, as long as it's set up right, so I would think that you can single hand whatever cat you want. That being said, you have to think about which class of boats you'd be most competitive in as a single hander...

Where did James cut the sails?
I don’t have a problem with sailing a 6.0 solo but in the rare unlikelihood I capsize I’d prefer to rescue myself.