Does anybody know what the US sailing Portsmouth numbers for the laser dinghy are and if these numbers can be compared to the cat portsmouth numbers ?

That would help me.

Matt and Joe, basically what I'm trying to do is keep walking down the scaling path that lead the F16's to have the same performance as the F18's and that has also shown the Aussie F14's to hang with both the F16's and F18's. This will allow the F12 to be a pretty fast boat.

Roughly speaking if we scale a 5.52 mtr long F18 hull (330 kg crew+boat weight) down to 3.65 mtr (F12) then that hull will carry optimally 100 kg (boat + crew). Now if we are succesful in making the F12 50 kg ready to sail then a 50 kg kid will be flying with about the same speed as the F18 if the rigs are scaled by the same extend. This latter conditions is too much to live up to as that would require some 9.25 sq.mtr. of upwind sailarea. and we would only carry something like 6 sq. mtr. But still those 6 sq. mtr. would bring the F12 performance to somewhere around the Hobie 16's and Prindle 16's. And that is really not a bad speed potential for the kids. It will certainly impress the Laser crowd.

But this are just early predictions.


And Matt, in my basic plan the platform would look almost the same as an A-cat except not having daggerboards but skegs. The only real different will be the rig itself but I think the unstayed landyacht rig does look flashy enough to make it attractive. Ohh, and it won't have a trapeze. It will be a hiking boat just like the laser.

But one thing is for sure, because of the extra width a kid will be able to make the F12 go much faster then he can make the laser dinghy go. Afterall you need to be pretty tall and heavy to get max performance out of a laser.

Wouter