Hi Steve

I can appreciate you trying to make sense of some of this living on the other side of the Atlantic, and having only what is reported to go by…I would be at the same disadvantage trying to make sense out of something happing in your neck of the woods.

Here is the web site with the History of the SC/ARC products…http://www.aquarius-sail.com/ that may give you a bit more information on the design/construction and philosophy behind Bill Roberts’s designs, and Tom Habermans eye towards quality construction.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Roberts for the first time this past weekend. He generously offered to show me the new ARC 17 he had at his home, and explained (and showed) to me the reasoning behind the set up on my 1994 SC 17.

I do not want to rehash the whole SC/ARC design debate again. But for the life of me I cannot understand why Bill Roberts and SC/ARC draws so much fire, and is plagued with so much inaccurate information. His designs are sound; they fundamentally solve problems encountered by all beach cats, with greater success (resisting pitch polling, more resisting to turtling, easier to right, the ability to carry greater usable sail area, and greater helm balance with spinnaker).

Lots of other companies make claims that their boat can do this, or their boat does that…Bill goes out on the race course and PROVES IT!… with on the water results….in real races…in real world conditions. Even with sever handy caps like sailing a 23-year-old boat that is 100 lbs over weight.

If you go by hypostasis based on false premises, you end up with a P-16 being a better design than a M-20… like in one of the posts above.

How come when Eric and Bill win the first day of the Steeple Chase “it’s a fluke” (winning by 42 min the first day against the I-20 that came in first the second day) But the second day when they are 25 min behind that particular I-20, it is because they were over canvassed, no mention that the SC 20 finished the race with only one rudder.

“Day 2 : Conditions were more testing, "around 20 mph out of the south". Now the lighter I-20`s beat the SC20 by 25 minutes, granted they put in a capsize, but it shouldn’t take 25 minutes to right a beach cat (unless it’s really heavy with a tall rig ) so I’m guessing they couldn’t push as hard as the I-20`s before digging the bows in (see pic from the race report).”

How hard can you push with a broken rudder? And look at how much of the field they still manage to beat even with one rudder! How well do you think an I-20 would have faired if they had lost one of their rudders?

As far as the picture goes, if you had ever had the opportunity to sail a SC product, you would know that the boat was designed to burry the bow with no ill effects…when most people see that picture they would assume the boat pitch polled immediately after the picture was taken…because they have experienced just that when this level of bow dive was encountered on any other hull design. However, any SC/ARC owner would tell you it is just indicating the boat is being pushed hard down wind because it can dive the bows all day long with impunity.

Or how about the ARC 17, It won the Trade winds regatta…a new, US built board less beach cat wins the open division and hardly a mention of it any where…If it would have been a Hobie or Performance Catamaran, or AHPC product we would have been seeing it and reading about it everywhere.

All these little assumptions and miss-statements just add to the cloud that obscures the high quality and superior design aspects of the SC/ARC line up. Most… if not all the criticism I have read has been by people who A) Never owned a SC/ARC product, B) Saw one once, being sailed (or attempted to be sailed) by someone without a clue of how to sail C) Never actually sailed, or saw one, but heard that….

All this anti SC/ARC rhetoric is “one” of the factors that has kept the numbers of SC/ARC products on the market small…

“Now imagine you were to build a SC20 out of epoxy foam sandwich etc & make it as light as a Tornado!”

Steve, I bet Bill and Tom would love to…if they had assurances that someone would buy it…people throw numbers around here for raw materials such as Carbon fiber…but they must have no business knowledge, they don’t factor in the time it takes to make a “perfect plug”, the molds themselves, the maintenance of the molds, the cost of the property and buildings the boats are made in, the completed operations insurance, the light and water bill, tools, safety equipment, fees of disposing of hazardous waste, workers compensation insurance ( probably about $40 per hundred of wages paid), a living wage to their employees, office staff, office supplies, web site, customer service…and a thousand other things…so yes if you are a back yard builder this doesn’t affect you, but a boat building business in the US drowns in government regulations, fees and mandatory insurance.

ARC 21 @21’-6” weighs 400 lb, 33’ mast, 282 sq/ft main/jib, 346 sq/ft spinnaker.
I-20 @20’-0” weighs 390 lb, 32’ mast, 246 sq/ft main/jib, 270 sq/ft spinnaker.
The ARC 21 is 1’-6” longer, a foot taller mast, 36 sq/ft more in Main/Jib, 76 sq/ft larger spinnaker…yet is only 10 lbs (doubt if the sails are included in either boats weight) more than your “lighter” I-20. Plus the ARC is Epoxy/foam sandwich, and the I-20 uses Vinyl ester resin/foam sandwich (not as strong).

You will find that the ARC product line is already made out of epoxy/foam sandwich…as far as the Autoclave manufacturing method ( like the Tornado), Bill has already addressed that issue…very few cat sailors are ready to fork out the kind of money for a boat built from that technology…it is not like you see a Marstrom Tornado in everyone’s back yard.

How does this all relate to the original post? It’s all about the total design, and the way each aspect of the design interplay…it is not just about the weight…a poor design in carbon fiber autoclave construction, would still be a poor design.

I hope you take this the right way Steve…I am just trying to give you the other side of the story…the more correct information we have to go on, the better. It seems there are few if any SC/ARC products in your area on which to base a “hands on” opinion. Sorry if this post come accross as defensive...obviously I am very passionate about SC...If you get a chance to sail one you will understand why.
Regards
Bob