Sure a carbon-fibre or kevlar hulled F14, with massive sails, trapzeze etc would be an unreal boat to sail. For those of us who haven't won lotto, how about this:

The F14 class allows crappy old boats that are otherwise not competitive to be upgraded beyond their class rules. For exmaple I've an old Paper Tiger which is grossly overweight, lacks hull rigiity and is complete with ancient stretched sails & heavy timber foils. It is 10 to 20 minutes slower per hour around a course than top new boats. If I 'turbo' it with a jib & trapeze it might bring it upto their speeds, but then be called a F14 instead of a PT. At least racing would be more fun!

The boat originally cost $250 (Australian), which included an entire spare boat with wrecked hulls. Upgrades like new ropes & adjustable fittings have brought the total cost to around $600. The turbo option would be all home-built recycled, with the jib cut from a horrible old mainsail & trapeze made from old car seat-belts & a spare stay-wire.

If there were a regatta open to all 14 foot cats, we'd have bigger fleet numbers and more exciting racing. Something like the recent Koonawarra Bay 14ft cat regatta: http://www.koonawarrabaysc.org.au/regattas&results.htm

Maybe the F14 could include a sub-class of old dead boats given a new lease on life; the "Zombie" division!

I guess that the only way to achieve that is to put in the rules that any boat participating must be sold if somebody is offering the sum of $1000. Otherwise if the thing gets popular it will attract the guys with money to spend

Sounds like the motor racing in Finland featured on Top Gear recently. Looks like it certainly got all sorts of people into motor racing.

"...& trapeze made from old car seat-belts & a spare stay-wire."

No need to have trapeze wire, a length of light dyneema rope will not require swaging.

Been there, done that, never going there again. An off-the-shelf second-hand harness is the minimum, "the boys" will thank you

I'm, using dyneema for everything on the F12:s but for the real boys it should be nothing less than PBO

Yeah- just saw the replay of that! And they have everybody from little kids to grandfathers racing them! Apparently they have different "classes" based on cost- but agree it's an interesting concept that could work here, would just take organizing. Suspect in the beginning every time a boat won someone would want to buy it so the "seller" would then be boatless? You might have to amend rule to say the buyer must give the seller their boat + $??? OR $1000 (or whatever)??

Kirt

The idea is that you sail with junk far under the price limit, and if anybody is stupid enough to put more money in he is bound to loose it.

used to be called bucket racing when friends were doing it with 50cc bikes in the 80's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_racing

think you had to sell if someone offered you $200

racing done around cones in carparks