I agree with Phill on this, I teach children in Optimists, at my club we have around 50 kids sailing them on a Monday night, my older children 5,8 and 10, all sail optimists. So selfishly I want the F12 to be a boat for them. I get the feeling that Wouter also wants the boat to be for himself!

i know when the concept was first talked about on the main forum a number of people expressed an interest in this concept for younger children.

It should be possible to have an f12 for 7-12 year old and one for 12+ by having different rigs.

Ultimately I believe the hulls should be rotomoulded. Sorry to mention the plastic word on this forum.

Have you seen the Open Bic? I bet that this is the future of Kids monohull sailing. They start off with an Optimist rig on this boat and then add the Bic rig for more performance. Can't we do this with the Kids F12.

http://www.openbic.com/



Gareth

I've actually done the math and modelling on the F12 and interestingly enough it is not suited to say 5 or 8 year olds.

If you scale the basic catamran design down to 10 or 8 feet then you run into other problems, like pitching resistance. The catamaran design doesn't lend itself very well to very short hull lengths. That is one of the reasons why the F12 is what it is now, geared towards 12-16 year old youths and light adults.

Other designers and project teams are invited to create and succesfully establish (smaller) cats geared towards smaller sailors, but I'm not going to do it.

Wouter

I didn't know that.
In spite of those problems, would it be possible in your opinion to design and build a cat under 12 ft able to beat the Optimist (even if marginally) in the relevant features:

speed
pointing ability
safety
fun
ease of rigging
price

What Math or Modelling can tell you that the design is not suited to 5 or 8 year olds?

Gareth

Well actually, they can sail it just fine as long as they crank on the ram vang. But people simply don't regard a 12 foot by 7 foot wide catamaran design with a 7.00 sq. mtr. rig as a good size for a young kid and they are probably right as the craft will be quite fast.

Placing a 3.5 sq. mtr. sail will go a long way in correcting these issues but then the platform will look weird as a 3.5 mtr. rig is very small on such a platform. It can still be done however.

But if you optimize a 12 foot catamaran to its maximum performance (why else go for the catamaran concept ?) then the 5-10 years are expected to be scared shitless. At what age do parents put their kids on fast dirt bikes ?

Wouter

I guess his answer will be a bit complex, but it probably has to do with righting moment.
The Optimist's weight range is from 38 kg to 54 kg only and the age range is from 7 to 15 years old.

Luiz,

It might interest you that a 40 kg kid will be able to match a Laser-1 sailed by a 80 kg adult and not feel more powered up then that 80 kg guy.

40 kg kids are on average 12 years of age. Of course there is nothing wrong with placing two 8 year olds on the boat who are combined 40 kg and pump out the same performance.

Wouter

Wouter,

Everything is about performance with you, but that is not a cats only virtue, to my mind a cats best virtue for 7-12 year olds is stability, and putting a small rig on a cat is exactly what I am suggesting. One of the main reasons the Optimist is so liked is its stability. Remember kids don't pick the optimist its the parents and clubs.

Actually its stability and maneuverability and this is a vice with a cat, especially a boardless cat and this could be the killer for the F12 for 7-12 year olds. I am sure that is why Phills concept had boards.

Gareth

There is -plenty of water out there...let Wouter do his thing with the teens and interested Adults. You do your thing with the 7-12 year olds. Build whatever you want, no one is stopping you... if the bickering keeps up, by the time you come to some sort of agreement (if ever) the current 7 year olds will be too old (big) for the platform that is being arguing for.

Here the best way to settle this…let all interested parties go out on their own, design and build their ideal F-12…then get them out on the water and see which ones perform…Not to be offensive but this “put up or shut up” approach could be much more productive than just arguing back and forth with “I Think” “You Think”

Those that do not have the expertise to design and build a proto type would do best to leave the decisions as to length/beam/weight/sail area etc. to the ones that are willing to put their money where their mouth is…either way, once they are on the water the fact will be quickly separated from opinion.

Best Regards,
Bob

First off, Wouter does not have his own kids so, parents, you all know he cannot just "get it" about kids. No insult intended, Wout, but you simply can't. Neither could I until at age 48 I had a son. Now Jack's seven and he's sailed with me a lot. I bought him an Opti because, well, I guessed that's how it's supposed to be done.

But we live in a beach town, beach cats drag racing to little islands, stopping at restaurants for a bite, ducking bridges and across shoals, simply playing like 7 year olds should. There is very little Opti racing and not until age 10. Jack's Opti gets little use.

Then I saw an ad for a used Hobie Bravo. We went and looked at it and WHAM! He is HOOKED! He thinks it is the coolest looking boat on earth and it is (but by a completely different mindset than Wouter and most glass cat racers). Slow? Heavy? No boom? No sail shape? All true and at age 7 he does not care one bit. The hope of beiing solo a catamaran captain is all he thinks about. What I want to teach him is sailing independence and a never ending need to be on the water. The Bravo seems to do that for him. Being rotomolded, he can't hurt it on oyster bars, it will carry all his pals, it's so stable he can stand and fish, and he should keep up with and maybe beat the large Sunfish fleet here.

Bravo, Bravo! Jack chose the boat, not me. It's like having a BMX bike but on the water. He snears at the Opti and tells me it's just a slow bathtub...and he's right. Do i want a competitive racer snob or a tan little beach rat? I'll take the swaggering, sandy beach rat kid any day! And 7 years from now he'll kicking butt in some faster cat, I hope.

Can anyone else suggest a starter boat for 7-10 year olds that gets them excited?

Have you compared the specs of the Bravo to the F12. Notice any similarities ?

But still you feel confident to tell us all that F12 is completely wrong. Will be very interesting to hear your argumentation.

People never fail to amaze me.

Wouter

Wouter, it's not "wrong" but you need to think like a kid, or at least run it by them first. Otherwise, you've built another boat for yourself.

How many times have I watched my son open a Christmas or birthday present, only to see him ignore the present and play with the really cool box!

Folks,
The fact you can teach 7-12 year olds on a 12 ft cat is fact because I've done it for several years at my old sailing club.
I even made sails for each of the 6 12 footers that we had. 80sq ft of sail area and cost me around $200 per sail to make including the cost of batterns.
So that was just basic material cost at wholesale prices.
It was while back now.

All the maths will do is put you in the ballpark or in this case conveniently out of the ballpark.

Interesting to note the 12 ft cats never pitch polled although my youngest at times did drive the crap out of them downwind when the breeze was up and with the spray coming off the front of the boat I was always waiting for him to stick it in. He claimed he knew what he was doing and had everything under control but from the standpoint of an anxious parent.........
The main draw back was the time it took to rig the boats and they were not pleasant on the eye and heavier than I'd like to move around.
You have to put this in context in as much as we had a bunch of Hobie Hawks at the club. (very small dinghy for young kids like the optimist dinghy.) That was our training boat until we got the cats. After the cats arrived we couldn't get the kids to use the Hobie Hawks. The Hawks were near new shiny and very colorful sails. Still they would fight over the old cats.

This whole experience is what prompted me to come up with the idea of a 12ft cat with a free standing rig because in order for me to go sailing I had to rig 3 boats. My own and one for each of my two sons.

So while lying on the beach one day looking out at my kids in the surf I was trying to come with terms of the enjoyment of sailing,the hassel of rigging their boats, what attracted them to the sport and what discouraged other parents after their initial enthusiasm at the sailing school.
Over a 2 week period I did some sketches to design a neat and asthetically pleasing way of mounting the rig.

Sinse then Wouter has developed the concept more in line of a boat for older children and himself.
This is quite different from what I originally started out to do and I will not be persuaded that I can not design a very good boat for 7-12 yr olds that meets all of the goals I'd set for the design.
For me this is about bringing cat sailing to young children,
between the ages of 7 and 12. It can be done, it has been done but in order for it to spread it needs to be done better.

Please feel free to disagree with me as we are all entitled to a point of view. I have just expressed mine and will let anyone who wants to crap on to do it unhindered. I have no interest in all this arguing.
Life is just too short.

BTW:-
I hope what Wouter is working on works out for him and anyone else in need of such a craft. Afterall this is about getting people on the water.

Regards,
Phill

I don't see any harm in building and targeting these boats towards kids. And I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be able to handle them. The speed of these cats is significantly lower than kids in the age group we are discussing already achieve on their skateboats and bikes and crashing a boat will have a far softer landing.

I also agree that a rotomoulded boat would be great, however, the cost of tooling up for one of these is very high and would require someone to take a serious punt.

I have had a few discussions "offline" with people about my f12 stuff I did earlier this year and I'm currently working up a price for a pre-cut plywood kit. What I would like is feedback from interested parties on a couple of design ideas with the target audiance of YOUNG kids in mind.

1. Centreboards. The dinghies I was tought to sail on (age 8) had them, why shouldn't a cat for the same age group.

2. Sail controls. Training dinghies usually have Vang, and mainsheet with cunningham and outhaul tied off. Is this ok on a training cat?

3. Free standing or stayed mast. The boats I learnt to sail on were a mixture of both and I believe the opti has stays. Given that a stayed mast will be lighter and therefor more likely to be able to be stepped by the young sailor which option is better?

4. Reefing. A lot of modern youth trainers can be de-powered by wrapping the sail around the mast. Do people like this idea and would wrapping around the boom be a suitable alternative if the mast was stayed? (would mean having a traveller and main rather than a main and vang).

5. Floats on mast. In an earlier discussion Phill suggested that having a float on the mast was a bad idea as it meant the boat may blow away from kids. I'm tempted to agree, what does everyone else think.

I'd also welcome any other feedback.

Note. these questions are with a sub 12 year sailor in mind and I'm not looking for ideas on boats targeted towards other markets.

edit:

Phill posted while I was typing and I agree with him on pretty much everything in his post.

I've tried a new Bic open thanks to Brett at Glasscraft the kids had a ball in the morning, easy righting, basic sheets and when the bullets were over 30 knots and the kids 420 was getting flattened with me at 105kg on the wire I took the Bic out. It was great fun and very robust I managed to hike out on it and it really impressed me BUT. Its not a car topper unless you have two adults it was really heavy and awkward to load for its size, it is no where as stable as a small cat I very nearly purchased one but didn't for the above reasons
regards

Just to be clear on this topic. I can only concentrate on one project of this magnitude at the time. I have a plan of how to link this design up with other classes of which the smallest boats are still the H16's, SL16's and F16's. The Dragoon is too small a class to really matter at this time. There is no F14 yet nor I expect it to be here any time soon if ever.

These limits do force me into the direction that the F12 is going now. It is as simple as that.

This doesn't mean in any way however that I will oppose or frustrate any other group designing a cat for kids in the range 7-12. I'm just saying that I won't be part of that and that I won't modify my F12 to suit that range optimally. My targetted range is 12-16 year old youths or crew weights in the range 40 -65 kg. Basically a cat based replacement for the laser 4.7 and laser radial. For people that want to know, I'm 90 kg myself.

Wouter

Phil, what general design parameters do you see being appropriate for the 12-16 age group - i.e. what would the kids on your proposed design graduate to in terms of size, sail area etc?

This may have been posted about before...but if not here it is...a 10' cat for kids...
http://www.kittencat.co.nz/

I had Aerynt's son Michael (13) call me last night for help with how to design a better boat than Wouter's shown in his first impressions post. After a few faxes etc I threw the following together which is what Michael and John(7) think their next boat should look like. Its just the hull, can only do so much in one evening.
RG

more pics, next few are of the hull flat paneled