so your opinion is that my size/frame will for the most part, and during the leaning curve not affect my position in a F-16 class?.
Best answer here is to just give it a try and see for yourself.
The second best answer is that in the F16 class we also mix 1-up and 2-up crews in the same racing fleet as the more boats there are on the starting line is more fun for everybody ! The scoring can be seperate but more often we have simply made only one final score listing of the mixed fleet.
Interestingly enough the mode of sailing (singlehanded or doublehanded) does not appear to hold any predictive value for the final result in the mix fleet racing. Even several of us ourselved didn't expect this situation at the beginning of the F16 class but over time we have found ample real life evidence that there is as good as no difference in "round-the-course" performance between a well sailed 2-up F16 and a well sailed 1-up F16. The weight difference can not get more pronounced then between a 150 kg 2-up crew and a 75 kg 1-up crew.
In the past with mixed spinnakerless designs the downwind leg was the downfall of the heavier crews. But with the spinnaker usage the onus has been seriously moved back towards sailing skill and away from an ideal crewweight.
i do wonder as it becomes some 50% of the displacement (some cases)
Those numbers are of course truthful, but real racing has shown that these ratio's are not as important for overall performance as we may believe. That was the lesson that was learned. Apparently the real performance limit is found somewhere else. Lightweight is important in getting up to speed comparable to teh F18/F16 level but going beyond that speed requires solutions in a different area. Much like the sound barrier limited all early jet planes to subsonic speeds no matter how large their engine power were. I believe the limits faced by modern fast cat designs are energitic in basis such like angle of attack efficiencies but also the fact that to accelerate a given mass to a higher speed ever larger amounts of power are needed. And mass itself is a factor in all equations where often it is devided out by itself. Sort of like the fact that a heavy person falls just as quickly of a building as a lightweight asian female ! I believe it is these dependencies that keep F16's around the same performance over a rather larger range of crew weights.
But please don't take my word for it, just give it a try yourself and make your own comparisons. Just promise me that you'll give it a try and don't let anybody tell you that these are boats for midgets.
Regards,
Wouter
