It's not BS, and Matt when you sail a season heavy we can talk. I've sailed both ways, lighter is better.

Finally the obvious truth from someone I trust.

Matt, Your 20 project sounds cool, I'd love to see it sometime, but I can see why you benched it.

OK let me rephrase it.

Weight makes a difference but where you place the weight makes a **** load more difference than the amount. (Within a range)

My bitch against the crying on boat size is that most of the claims are by people who aren't that heavy and would be right in the mix in the F18 class in crew weight for example, but stick with the too big claim. I feel it is primarily a carry over from the h16 days where weight REALLY did matter. With the full hulls it is not nearly as big a deal, and watching some of the loudest complainers sailing it is not the weight but the fact they move around like an elephant and are twice as slow in every manouver. A heavy guy who is smooth on the boat and can move correctly and quickly will sail just as fast, if not faster in some conditions than the light team.

Agree with most, the rest isn't worth the trouble debating but we can always talk about over a beer/rummy/whatever is available at KPRR... it's gonna be great!

I think Mischa and Eduard are combined something like 154 kg (340 lbs). Ashby and Bundock were around 160 kg (355 lbs) combined at a time. Never stopped them from winning their races.

I think experience in the F18 class has shown that you can't see a significant correllation between race results and crew weights when you stay in the range 140-165 kg (310lbs - 365lbs). The 140 kg limit is most due to having to sail with the smaller suit of sails.

I don't know how heavy Trey is but I dare quess he and his crew are not above 165 kg (365 lbs)

Wouter

Since you already hijacked it -

How many of you 20 Tybee guys are going to be a KPRR?
3 days and a great party planned, I am really looking forward to it.

M

Now this is the old Wouter. I'm not going this rabbit hole with you.

Trey and Alan are 172 kg (380 lbs), I think.

Tad and Bailey, 400lbs. (181kg)

Chums/Corpus is 420 lbs.

Matt:

Even back on the H-16 days, we were around 310-315 and we beat the lighter guy with superior boat handing/tactics. I agree it is HOW you move the weight than the weight up to a certain point when you are heaver.

Doug

Okay summarizing :

Trey and Alan 172 kg (380 lbs)
Tad and Bailey 181 kg (400 lbs)
Chums and Corpus 190 kg (420 lbs)


Trey and his man can get by on the F18; they are above the fold but not by that much. In a race like Tybee, that 1% difference is not going hurt as much as on a regular congested course. Getting stuck in the surf by more then 4 min compared to your competition will already do that for you in a 7 hour race day. And we have seen more then a few boats get stuck by that amount.

The other two teams, well yeah, they ARE above the fold for the F18 in the way of competitiveness. Still doesn't mean they can't race it and do well, but they'll need a tad more skills to win out over a team at about 150 kg. They must expect about 2.5-3.0% performance diff around a race course.

To put things in perspective, this would amount to about 1 hour and 40 minutes over the recent Tybee if (and that is a big if) the final result is 100% dominated by boat speed. However, I remember Mischa commenting on a particular day that it was mostly about finding the right spots with wind and hardly about boat speed. And either team totalled up a delay of 6 hours to their fellow and first N20 anyway.

But anyway, there is no reason to ditch the N20 so this is all academic anyway.

Wouter

For me its less about the weight, and more about the forgiving nature of the N20.

I don't really need anymore excuses to list for my poor performances, and the N20, so far, has been the one boat that could handle my beefcake the best.

I got no argument for you there.

Wouter

Chesapeake Nacra 20s range from 365 - 450ish.

Todd,

I'll send you an email with the 14 Nacra 20 owners contact info that we have here. Thanks for collecting.

BTW, nice beach landing...you scared the crap out of me. I have a hard time looking at that series of pics. Glad it ended up only with 8.5 style points instead of a trip to the ER!

90 wpm!

I bet if you called Nacra, they would sell you a Nacra 6.0 beam. Are you guys sure they really cut-off the 6.0 class? I never heard anything approaching that.

Todd, what Brian and I tried to do was get a bit more control over the changes that were being released to an OD class, rudders, snuffer system and self tacker and we had zero success. What you guys are thinking about doing is a bit different and I'd think Rick Bliss would be a good source to tap into. Also one of the biggest hurdles you'll run into is apathy. I know the Tybee teams are quite passionate right now but you have a LOT of N20 owners that don't do the Tybee and they may not see the same urgency or any urgency at all. It is an OD class after all, who cares if the sails are dated you're OD and EP has stepped up and appears to be making right by you guys. What you have going for you right now is there isn't another 20 on the market. As Macca and Matt have hinted at if a new 20 hits the market the N20 is the new N6.0 and it will happen over night.

Is your goal in opening up the sail plan for development to sail better against F18’s in the tiny wind band of double trapped spin reaching? If that’s the case why don’t you just create T500 spin rule and leave everything else as is. You can use your sporty flat spins for the T500 and DPN races and your other sails for the OD events. Just keep in mind, if you open up the sail plan you then have the overhead of getting measurement certs, and unless you can work out some kind of in house certification it’s going to be a bit of a pain.

Keep in mind opening up an OD class for development can very much be a double edge sword.

Dingo,

I think making it as simple as possible would be a better solution. Simply ASKING the manufacturer as a class to update the sailplan to a modern shape. This way there's no measurements, no certifications, and the new sails will be filtered in as people replace their OD sails.

I know it sounds simple but you'll get resistence at both ends. You WILL have owners that see absolutly no value in an updated a sailplan for an OD class. Be forewand it's going to be bit more work and frustration than being the Area D North rep.

I really hope it works out for you guys and best of luck.