Just curious where the all the boats come in on the weight spectrum. Looking over older posts, it looks like the weights for 2-up are approximately:
Viper: 130
Falcon: 112
Blade: 107
Taipan: 107
Nacra: ?
Raptor:107 (per website)
Bimare:122 (per website)
Cirrus: ?

I don't remember and I tossed all my notes some time ago.

We weighed Blades and Taipans about two years ago. Only the Taipan came close to min. at about 2 lbs. over.

Fragmentation of the class in open events due to different weights we can live with. If the hotshots race as F16 this issue goes away and additional classes offers additional honors to those who choose to race as one design or under a rating system. No need to worry.

Tampering with class rules to make a lot of boats obsolete and "dumbing down" the class is the real issue.
The intention was to have a high tech class and increasing min weight certainly is not following the founders targets. Increasing min weight is only a move to increase profits. All kind of good intentions can be argued like "making the class accessible to more sailors", "evening out the playing field" etc. Take this argument to the extreme and we soon can argue about sailing bathtubs with bedsheets for sails becouse it is so even and fair.

In the end the class about sailors, the sailing experience and social interaction, not profits. I definately dont want the targets of the class to change just to increase profits of one or several manufacturers. I would rather keep the experience as it is and support those manufacturers stepping up to the challenge of building to min weight at a reasonable price.

I would never agree to raising minimum weight. Eventually the latest greatest cloth or resin will come out making carbon, or epoxy obsolete.

Next year Pete, I'm all uni. Including nationals.

Then you'd better step up to the Presidency!

Sadly market forces will dictate in the end, the major manufacturers have become the majority and in any democracy the majority should rule.

Whether we disagree that raising the weight simply because it suits the major players in making their boats easier to build and they are able to use components from other ranges to cut the costs down, is beside the point, a majority of F16 boats are now in the 120 - 130kgs bracket and suited to dual crews.

Market forces are all under regulations. That is where a class structure and ideology comes into the picture.

The manufacturers are not an majority. Those who bought their products might be a majority. That will be confirmed or not as part of a potential vote if speculation becomes reality.

I do see a lot of comments and some are done logical wise but not completely valid. Weight is one thing but the reason for the increasing is something different. It is very strange if i would open the **** box here but the reason of my step down is quite logic if you know the details.
Yes i am maybe not the perfect manager but more a technical guy but i do know which step needs to be done before the next step to make a system work. I can tell you all that i have been fighting the last 2 years to keep the class as much as possible in the way as it has been set up by the founders but this struggle was consuming more time which better should have been used in set up of the organization and this was simply not possible.
I build a strong and stiff Raptor in glass/epoxy at this moment below 107kg and the reason why i did try to achieve this is because as a sailor i would always ask a builder for a product to the class rules. I have found out that in the F16 class the majority of sailors are not really asking this from the builders, this is odd in my opinion, and a key element what causes the problem for the F16 class.

Please don't repeat this and give the "Fad" folks more ammo...

You're interpreting this the wrong way. It insures the class will flourish.

Beach catting in the U.S. is dead. Those classes who are adopted into formal settings will continue to grow for a long time. Those that don't are done. A class being the possible exception.

that makes me feel a little better... thanks for the clarification

If all the manufacturers make boats at 120kgs then only boats can be purchased at 120kgs and therefore the manufacturers control the vote.

AHPC set out and marketed their boats well, they had top class sailors win events, they discounted and made sure their boats were seen at events. They gave good backup and had a good design, albeit probably 20 kgs over weight. They had good manufacturing processes in a cheap labour environment, they took the marketing of there boats seriously and because of that they are now the dominating manufacturer.

I say well done, you deserve to be top dog and now you can dictate to what should be a long running class. Every other manufacturer out there dithered about or didn't have the budget to really push their products and thus lost the marketing campaign.

Remember history is littered with great design being over whelmed by inferior design simply by marketing nous and expertise, the best doesn't always succeed.

If the class was to vote I would actually vote to increase the weight further to about 130kgs, its at this point the F16's suddenly start to become competitive in SCHRS and Texel handicap systems. At this weight the performance is not lost on handicap and it gives good margins on build durability.

The ironic thing is that if the weight is increased to 125kgs, it will have the opposite effect to what the manufacturers hope, that of sealing off the market to just 1 or 2 suppliers. At 125 kgs the likes of Hobie and others will all have boats on the water within 12 months, afterall all they have to build is hulls and use components from within their own range for ancillaries such as boards and masts. Cheap cheap development and a no brainer to at least be part of a probably the biggest growing market in small cat sailing.

awesome. I hope more people move this direction... at least up here

I think raising the minimum weight will end up in breaking up the F16 class, especially if Nacra will be able to provide enough of their Olympic 17s
Almost same price and not too much difference in weight then...
I chose the F16 besides I wanted to enter a challenging class that, although I´m a light Helm (68kg), I ´m able to right my F16 solo, so even whem my Helm doesn´t got time, I don´t have to stay on shore. IMHO I wouldn´t be able to right a 125kg boat without aids.

Righting is not an issue whether its 107 or 120kgs, its the mast weight and sail weight that does most of the damage.

will a 120-130kg F16 still have a carbon-mast? I dont think so an alloy mast is cheaper - especially if a manufacturer uses a shortend F18 mast...

Raising weight? There goes all the uni wannabees. Ya know, as we age, there is a need for a good lightweight uni/sloop-spin boat. But there is already a ready-to-go heavy sloop class out there--- F18.

Have fun.
BC

Sure. Why not?

Agree with Bob +1,0000

Disagree with Wayne from a previous post....about AHPC being Top Dog because they have more boats out there that are over weight and should therefore dictate rule changes.....so some of the other manufacturers built to the F16 specs and now we want to punish them with a rule change ... I don't think that's the class I want to be a part of.

I agree with Bob and Tback. I never did understand why owners did not demand the lightest boat that could be built under the rules, especially for the amount they were paying. The fact that it is close to minimum weight is the primary reason I purchased my Blade. It is a critical element in defining the F-16 class. Any discussion about the classs minimum weight this long after the class forming should be about how much and how quickly it should DECREASE! I propose the class weight decrease 1 pound a year for the next ten years as a sarting point.