I think we refer you (and the others) best to the class rules.


I refer to the following three rules :

1.2.1 The maximum overall length measured on the hulls is 5.00 m (= 16.4 ft).

7.3 Overall length of the hulls

The overall length of the hulls, outside rudder pintles, corresponds with the horizontal distance between the verticals passing through the extremity of the hulls, the boat being levelled on its waterline.

7.4 Rudder pintles

Elements fitted to the sterns that only function as hinges for the rudderblades or rudderstocks and don't effectively lengthen the waterline of the platform in any way.



The key element here is the part "and don't effectively lengthen the waterline of the platform in any way" as the ruling on max hull length is only there to limit waterline length and force the wetted surface area of all F16 hulls to a very similar total. Both these factors are important in equalizing the total drag between F16 makes and thus equalize performance. The position of the rudderboards is not a factor in this. Putting them further back may have some benefits in how the boat feels while steering (sensitive or not) but not in the ratio between total drag and total saildrive. As such we decided (when we wrote the class rules) to not limit the height of the rudderpintles and to exclude them from the hull measurement.

My ruling would be to go ahead and live your heart out. Personally I don't expect this feature to be a real winner anyway as the distance between the daggerboards and rudderboards is sufficient enough to fit the rudders directly to the sterns and not have an oversensitive feel while steering. Moving the rudders 15 cm back won't change the boats behavior that by any significant amount. The only thing that may change with these gantries is the length of the tiller arms if your rear beam is far back (the can now become longer). That may give the rudders a more calm feel but the response of the boat will not change significantly for the same rudder angles, just the feel you have when setting those angles by the tillers. Additionally, the length of the tiller arms is not regulated by the class rules and moving the rear beam foreward will allow the same lengthening. In effect, no worthwile goal is served by prohibiting the use of gantries. I mean why would it be more fair to allow a boat with a forward rear beam to have longer tiller arms but not allow another boat to lengthen these by using gantries. The third argument in favour of allowing it is that putting gantries on your sterns is something that can easily be done by anyone aftermarket and for low costs indeed. Just make up the gantries, using the pintle holes in teh sterns that are already there and bolt these gantries to the sterns.

So in summary, no class-balance-upsetting improvement is expected (or even possible in my opinion), much of the same benefits can be had by other means that are also allowed, it is simple, it is cheap and it is easily fitted to older boats by retrofitting. What on earth would banning these things have as positive effect beside making easily spooked sailors feel better by taking away their unfounded fears. These sailors belong in a very strict SMOD class rather then the F16 class, read my parting brief as F16 class chairman for details on this topic. The spirit of the F16 class and class rules has always been to allow such refinements of the F16 design, no matter what the opinion of any Technical Committee on that topic. I refer everybody here to the following F16 class rules :



2.6.1 In case of doubt, the intention of the rule makers, which is the spirit, shall take precedence over the letter of the rule.

2.6.2 The spirit of the rule includes, among other principles, the following considerations:

2.6.2a Preserving general equality in overall performance between crafts of different make, accepting small variations, in order to garantee fair racing between designs of different make.

2.6.2b Maximizing the freedom to optimize a design to personal preference and to improve the performance of a given crew and craft through refinement.

2.6.2c The allowance to gently improve, by design, the handling and overal behaviour of a craft in small controlled steps which don't upset the balance in the class to the extend that the continued existance and growth of the class are no longer guaranteed.



We are afterall (still) a (development) rule set where everything that is not specifically disallowed or obviously against the spirit of the rules is allowed. I feel a very strong case can be had on these points to "allow" gantries. By a very similar reasoning that allowed the T-foil rudders (by excluding them from the overall platform width as they don't contribute to righting moment, the feature that was sought to be limited by the width rules)

But I must underscore here that it appears I'm excommunicated from the class (while still being allowed to pay for class stuff like the URL's) and that the technical committee does not appear to have any interest in hearing the opinion of the guy that actually did 80 % of the work when writing the F16 rules.

So, the above is merely for what it is worth and the far off chance that I'll do a coup and take back the class !

Wouter