I think the Nacra curved foils actually have rib/spar construction inside.

So far its just about becoming the olympic class. There is no plan on selling yet..

A quote Given to me when asking about the boat pricing and specs.

That's what I heard in Thailand as well. They are not currently setup for production as far as tooling, etc. The reactions to the boat were very positive in Thailand, but the trials will be a whole different ballgame!

However, part of the Evaluation Criteria is that it "be equipment that avoids unnecessary or excessive costs." How is the committee supposed to evaluate that if a price hasn't even been established for the boat?

Nacra isn't without a business plan, I fully expect that they do have some idea about how much the boat will cost to produce. Chances are that, if they are being cagey about how much the boat will cost retail, it is because they have two different prices in mind depending on whether or not the committee chooses the boat.

Why do you think they will put the boat into production if it is not selected for the mixed multihull?

Seems to me... they would rather mine the F16/104 market in the EU with their new F16 boat before trying to jump start a new class which would attempt to draw sailors from F18's and F16's. By all accounts, this is a two person boat so the swiss army knife marketing of the F16 is missing.

I don't think we know how the ISAF selection committee will value all of the factors beyond sailing performance on the water. The Nacra 17 aims for something a bit different then an F16 flavor or a Hobie 16 with spin.

I would love to know if they got the boat in the hands of some of the Thai woman sailors and what feedback those ladies provided. They are part of the future of the sport!

Fat old guys are not wanted in the Olympics.

I had some moree time thinking about this entry to the trails and it seems to me that the new nacra 17 is the M20 of yesteryear in many respects.

It may well be all that a modern cat may be but it doesn't really seem to check the boxes that seems equally important for selection next to performance. Afterall, it is a completely new design, without a class or much development (ironing out teething problems) and it asks alot of investment for some performance and styling points. I was taken a little a back about the quotes for the very high aspect curved foils. That is definately not something the selection committee will view kindly as it goes directly against the wishes to grow participation in developping nations (= south america, asia and SOME african nations like Nigeria).

This new design is largely surrounded by unknowns, such as class and the probability that it ever will be accepted by mainstraim sailing. The word is that the market for the Nacra 20 carbon is done, all who want one have bought one and the "class" has stopped growing. Arguably it is a rare sight even in the big sailing nations. Or at least much more so then the other candidates with the exception of the Torrnado and Spitfire. I doubt the selection committee is going to look favourably upon a candidate of the same pedigree.

With respect to its design. The nacra 17 also doesn't appears to cater much for the mixed crews and light t medium weights of non-western sailors. The rumour has it that it is adorned with a 16 sq. mtr. Sail on what I expect is a slighly taller mast then the F16's. But even if it has a 8,5 mtr mast like the 16's then it still favours crews that are roughly 10 kg's more then a 135 kg on the Viper. The F16' s have the smallest sails of all the entries whereas the nacra 17 comes 3rd smallest after the Tornado and Tiger.

Now this is not in any way an argument for the 16's (eitherh Hobie 16 or F16) but it does show that the nacra 17 is not checking several important boxes in favour for some aspects that could well be pretty meaningless in these trails. So what if it is 5% faster then a Tiger (Which I think is doubtful). This is all but negligiable in a SMOD Olympic race. What does it really mean to the viewers that it has curved foils ? It is not that sailors of O-quality are going to let the boat point its bows to the sky while racing as that is slow and risks venting the foils. I also wonder if the crews will do much lifting and dropping of foils in a short tight fleet race as a few seconds lost will costs large stretches on the water if the other crew who keeps both foils down has the spi drawing sooners.

So I 've come to the conclusion that the curved foils are pretty meaningless for the big O cat. Hell, the Tornado still has low aspect centre boards and no-one complaints about those !

No i think the biggest selling point of the nacra 17 is that it will not interfere with any of the existing classes. Which is a mixed bag in my view as this also means that currently it has no support network or beginnings of an international class from which to start. Apart from that , why should ISAF, IOC or indeed the Olympics care about interference with other classes ?

Non-interference is reasoning that holds water from our perspective as recreational cat sailors but it doesn't from the perspective of the parties at the trails or involved in the big O circus. As such I don't think it will play any significant role in the selection.

At this time I truly believe the race is between the Hobie 16's and the F16's (nacra and AHPC).

The Tornado is out because of its history/reputation and other factors like cost, class size and the fact it simply doesn't suit the targeted crews as well as the alternatives.

The Spitfire is out not in any way because of its design or performance but because Sirena is too small a builder (network) and the class has not sufficient penetration international,y compaired to the alternatives.

Hobie Tiger is likely out because it doesn't suit the targeted crews well enough although I do see it as an entry that may throw a curveball. It does check many of the other boxes. However it is also between everything. It is not as as modern as the F16's neither as common as the H16's. It is more expensive then both others and significantly heavier and less optimal for the target sailors. Basically I see it as a less the optimal compromise under the specs of this Olympic selection criteria but one does well to never underestimate Hobie corp.

Rumour has it that the 16's are the likely favourites and I'm beginning to understand why.

Some think it is a shoe in for the Hobie 16 because of low costs but interestingly enough a bare Hobie 16 race EXCLUDING spi is 12.500 euro's in Europe and a spi kit for it does do 2000 Euro's. F16's are race ready fully equipped at 16.000 euro's and put Hobie 16 build quality to shame.

Basically one can get 9 F16's for the cost of 10 Hobie 16's. Doesn' appear to be much of a discriminator between these two boats. Certainly not for Europeans and all builders are doing production in thailand or whatever already. Besides, doing a batch of 50-80 F16's as a single production run to kick start all olympic hopefuls will drop costs as well.

So in my opinion it comes down how heavy the availabilith of the Hobie 16 is weighted in. It is as common as mud out there and the F16's aren't. On the other hand the performance, build quality and style of the F16's are well beyond the Hobie 16 with spi. I feel it will come down as a toss-upp between these factors with the nacra 17 a bit too far out on both key aspects and the Tiger as the potential curveball.


If I were Hobie then I would start drawing up plans for a Hobie F16 and not let nacra and AHPC corner the market if an F16 were to be chosen.

Just my thoughts

Or, Hobie might take the opinion that F16 will be screwed if one model gets 'O' selection - and stay well away!

According to the folks I talked to in Thailand, the 17 was designed for a combined crew weight of 130 kg. They felt the 16s were a little too underpowered for olympic level competition, and that the 17 fit the specs much more closely. Not sure why lifting the foils would be a problem on the 17- you raise the foils on a 16 or 18 at the windward mark anyway, not much of a difference.

As for the 16s, I agree they are likely favorites. However, I don't see why Hobie would design an F16- why would you train on a Hobie F16 when the Olympics are OD in a Nacra or Viper?

Btw the market for the 20c is not done. The price point is just a bit to high for the people who want into the class.

Dont forget that those who are to decide on this are mostly non-multihull sailors. H16 it is!

Video of the boat being sailed in Pattaya on the Thursday rest day. We tried to catch it on an Infusion... no way

http://youtu.be/gaSIIiBsfJM

Interestingly enough the F16's were designed for 142 kg crewweight. I know because I was the one who proposed the class rules in cooperation with Phill and Kirt.

I was the one who proposed to follow what Bethwaite calls the cube-square law. Or at least I learned later that he had given it that name. I arrived at this law myself because I was looking to use F18 hull development to kick start the the class what would later be called the F16's. I was looking to combine the benefits of the AHPC Taipan with the class structure of the F18's and the possibility of viable singlehanding with the same platform.

I like to play with calculators and punched in the scaling factor that was needed to scale down a F18 hull to F16 length and started playing with it. The Taipan was 4.95 mtr long but I rounded that off to 5.0 mtr. F18's are max 5.52 mtr long.

5.00/5.52 = 0,905797

I wanted this scaled hull to sit at the same waterline as the F18 hull and so I calculated its new displacement where I knew that 155 kg was considered ideal F18 weight at the time.

(0.905797)^3 * (180+155) = 248,96 kg or indeed 249 kg.

At the time the Taipan was 102 kg and my own spinnaker kit weighted just under 5 kg. This lead to the following calculated ideal crewweight for the new F16.

249 - 107 kg = 142 kg


Using the same ratio to determine equivalent mastheight and sailarea's would have produced the following measurements (followed by the measurements we settled on for the F16's)

Mainsail area 13.95 sq.mtr (15.0)
Masnsail luff 7.79 mtr (8.10)
Mast length 8.15 mtr (8.5)
Jib area 3.40 sq. mtr (3.70)

Of course the Taipan already had 14.58 sq.mtr mainsail with a 8.02 luff on a 8.47 mtr tall mast and an overlapping jib of 4.18 sq. Mtr. I wanted to grandfather this boat so I maxed the specs to at least enclose the Taipan. I also wanted a selftacking jib so I ran the numbers on a jib size that would allow that.

Over time we tweaked the specs so that the 1-up and 2-up versions both had a rating equal to eachother and the F18's where I was happy to put some more power in the rig to cater a little bit for the heavier then 142 kg crews as indeed I too am a large male from north-west Europe weighting in at 85 kg.

Some more calcs showed that 2.5 mtr width (Taipan 2.35 mtr) would work best with the larger rig when looking at overall righting moment. Mind you the cube-square law pedicted equality at 147 kg and 2.5 mtr width when using the smaller rig. Basically by opting for the larger rig specs I overpowered the boat for a 147 kg crew by 112% in relation to a 155 kg crew on a F18. The new F16 rig would need a crew of 169 kg to establish parity with the F18 crew in the ratio tipping moment to righting moment. We could then have made the boat wider, but noticed that alot of nations limit maximum trailer width to 2.5 mtr and we really didn't want to go past the ratio of 2 between length to width for fear of loading the bows up too much. The italians wanted A-cat width of 2.34, the europeans at least 2.60 mtr and the aussies 2.5 mtr. A decision had to be made and politically the 2.5 mtr could be justified due to the legal implications of overstepping the max trailer width. So we settled at 2.5 mtr. accepted a boat that is a bit overpowered in the rough stuff.

In fact , I bought improved light air performance against having to depower a little earlier. additionally, some drag factors didn't scale down by 0.905797 so I needed some extra sailpower to correct for that.

With this in mind I find it a little bit peculiar that a F16 is said to be underpowered. It is in fact more powered up then the F18's and even more so with respect to the Tornado. In truth, it is one of the most powered up 2-up catamarans right after the F18HT for example. This is part of the reason why the initial F16's were easy to put nose down. I don 't recall anybody calling the F18's or Tornado's underpowered, so why this claim with respect to the F16's ?

I feel too many people look at the name F16 and feel that thus hull length number says all one needs to know about these designs.

Making the nacra 17 even more powered up doesn't appear to me as a sound decision. Let alone the fact whether this in in fact at all needed. Afterall, the nacra F16 crews have just found out that their sail cut is lacking power in relation to the Vipers. So they are not even getting the max out of the F16 specs currently.

Wouter

"However, I don't see why Hobie would design an F16- why would you train on a Hobie F16 when the Olympics are OD in a Nacra or Viper?"


Brand loyalty and because maybe one has a Hobie dealor that one prefers over the another brand dealor because of service etc.

Assuming that a Viper F16 or Nacra F16 is chosen then a Hobie F16 would be a pretty good training vehicle all the way till a truly serious campaign to be selected is undertaken.

Apart from that, Hobie needs to cover the bases at some point just as they did with the Tiger when the Hobie 18 based formula class was being superseaded by the F18's.

Hobie must take care to not end up with only the rare FX-one as their ticket in this segment of cat sailing.

Or at least that is what I'm opinioning.

For the 130 kg viper the overpoweredness is reduced by 4.8 % to about 107% overall. Therefor the viper will establish parity with the 155 kg F18 crew at 154,9 kg themselves.

Wouter

I meant no disrespect towards the F16s, they look like great boats, and they certainly are fast. My only point was that the folks at Nacra feel that the 17 more closely fits the criteria without impacting an existing class. I'm not trying to attack any other design, hope it doesn't come across that way.

Which one of you jackasses said Wouter's name 3 times?

No worries... I think you offered great information and a balanced point of view.

Clearly when the submissions for mixed multihull range from Hobie 16's with Spins to Tornados with every stop in between... The builders cannot say with any authority....
"we think the XXX fits the criteria the best" (only three of the builders agree on the same basic solution)

Who the hell knows... I certainly wish the ISAF had been clearer and ranked their priorities ... I don't get what the benefit of being so obtuse gets them.

Just great Tawd, thanks to that comment I just squirted beer through my nose.

At least you didn't waste it.

Of course Jeff, neither do I want to question preoples motives.

I was just playing around with some numbers and reasonings.

Now, I have to get back to the funny farm !

Wouter