Afircat,

Thanks for doing RC Duty. That is very kind of you. Saturday was without a doubt the nicest day of sailing I have seen on the Bay in my 9 years of racing here. A steadily building breeze with the occasional increases in pressure combined with very little wave action. Perfect! Three of us N20s were having very close racing with passing taking place upwind, downwind, at marks, and at the finish. Not passes that are 10 boats lengths apart, I mean passes within a boat length or less. Thanks again for doing RC!

I may be a little biased with the following:

Why is the N20 popular on the bay? It is a good light air boat. It’s a good heavy air boat. It is fairly easy to depower. It is relatively easy to sail fast; and yet to find speed advantage over others is still an interesting challenge. It does buoy racing really well. It can vie for line honors with the big negative PHRF monos in a 30 miles distance race even giving them a 10 minutes head start and the race is only 2.5 hours or so long. It can sail upwind with a 66’ “Upwind Sled”. The use of the words “sail” and “with” in the last sentence was used to be polite. (The words “spank” or “crush” could be substituted for a more accurate description however regrettable less “PC”).

This might be the biggest reason: It can handle a large range of crew weights well. If you look at our Fleet, we range in weight from 180 to say 250’ish (5’9” to 6’2”). That puts total crew weight in the 370 to 435 range. We are not fat people, just bigger than the cat sailors in other fleets. Before I digress too far with this, did I mention the N20s bows?

Upon my first glace at the N20 my attention was drawn to the plumb bow and the height and shape of the bow and the combined shear of the hull. Having started racing in a Thistle, I really like the plumb bow (***). Having owned and raced a H16 then a Nacra 6.0 the shape of the bow was frankly not attractive. After being out in some sizable waves it will probably grow on you like it did me. I can’t even walk by the bows without giving them a little shall we say pat-on-the-head and a “thank you, thank you, your unbelievable” being uttered.

Something important to me and maybe to you is it will handle 6 or so kids with four hanging from the traps and towing two more in an inflatable.

To borrow from Keith, your mileage may vary.

(***) Plumb bow will eat butt of A-cat without taking a scratch.