my thoughts on the first F16 event that I have attended...

1. Super nice people that are very accepting of strangers. Everyone I have meet (including the GYC folks) have been super friendly and helpful. I trailered in Friday at dusk and got tons of offers of help from the local cat fleet. Rates 10 on a "10 point" scale to me. No rigging the boat all by yourself, etc.

2. GYC is a nice, sheltered water location. Sea-breeze comes in at 1:00, etc. They have nice launch facility and community beach wheels (which is nice when you do not your own, yet).

3. Race 1: light air, we are moving ok - not drifting, but no trapping. Way too much mast rotation and finished 7 of 8 (ouch). The wing section mast is VERY sensitive to mast rotation angles. Course A/Gate/A/Finish.

4. Race 2: more wind, but still not much trapping. Less mast rotation pushes me first to round A mark (yippee), lose one boat downwind, stay in contention upwind and lose one more on the last downwind leg. Finish 3rd but close on the heels of the lead pack. Course A/Gate/A/Finish.

5. Race 3: Wind starts to pick up so that uni's are trapped and doubles are in/out. Matt and Gina crank it up. Upwind legs are close, but M/G pull away downwind - every freaking time. 2,3,4,5 are all close together - but M/G have a big split. Course A/Gate/A/Finish.

6. Race 4: More of the same: close upwind legs, M/G pull away downwind. Close fleet for 2,3,4,5 place. Course A/Gate/A/Gate/A/Finish.

I am very pleased with how the boat sails and is put together. Everything work like it should and I do not see an major overhauls needed. Matt puts high end components on the boat and it sails well. I still need to dial in the diamond wires and mast rake (quite a bit weather helm, but the boat was probably set up for doublehanding).

Singlehanded with Spi is a pure treat. I was very conservative today and sailed deeper than most, but heated it up when it felt good. As usual, the downind legs are crucial - experience with Spin comes highly recommended.

F16's are really fun boats and the fleet racing is tight - lots of fun.

Hope to do better tomorrow.

t

Could the unknown cat sailor be Fred Metcalf or Micheal Coffman ?

A go fast tip. In very light winds and big wind. Flat is fast with the superwing mast. In both sail with little mastrotation and a really tight downhaul. Mainsheet should be rather slack in the very light stuff (sailing with significant twist) and tight in the big winds. It will feel like you are sailing underpowered but it is actually faster then when sailing with a powered up feel. You must look to get the boat "streaming". Sometimes the required trim for this to happen feels counteractive, like depowering the rig further when you are feeling you are lacking grunt and others are passing you. For some reason you'll feel more underpowered but speed up anyway.

Welcome to wonderous world of wing mast sailing (A-cats, F16's and Capricorn F18)

How are the Datchet boys doing at their trainings weekend. James did you get a test sail on the Stealth F16's, your report ?

Wouter

You forgot to tell him why this is so Wouter
I am a great believer in knowing why some settings are fast, instead of just know that it works.

A flat airfoil has less drag than one with more draft. In light winds the lift to drag ratio for a flat airfoil results in a larger vector forwards than a deep one. When the wind picks up, the ratio between lift to drag from the deeper airfoil makes a better resultant vector forwards. At least, this is my understanding of it.

Big wind = easy to explain. You got to much power and you need to loose it in an efficient manner. Flat sails have a higher lift to drag ratio because by flattening your reduce drag more then you reduce lift. Both are reduced at the same time but drag is reduced alot more. So the boat feels LESS power-up but you get a better net drive and hence you go faster.


Very little wind = The sail is often to wide (cord) with respect to the energy enclosed in the movement of air particles; this means that the flow (particles) detaches from the mainsail before it (they) has reached the leech. This is when the sail is kept with a full draft, something many sailors believe they should have as to gain maximum drive. In effect the particles have insufficient momentum to follow a significant curve in the sail (draft) and they detach themselfs = stalling of the mainsail. This adds ALOT of drag. Now by reducing the draft sufficiently the particles will be able to follow the full curvature all the way to the leech without "stalling". The mainsail is now streaming again. This will again both reduce lift and drag but by reducing the drag ALOT more thus the net drive is increased and you'll go faster as a direct result.

The twist in the leech of the main in very light airs is because in these conditions the windspeed in the first 10 mtr of the ground will show a significant offsets in speeds. The resulting direction of the apparent wind flow at ground level can easily be 20 to 30 degrees more along the centreline then at the top of the mast. If you sail without any twist then either the top of your sail has stalled or the bottom of the sail has been completely weathervaned. Solution, sail with a significant amount of twist.


Typically sail with 200-300 mm twist along the leech on a F16 in nearly all conditions (Advice by Glenn Ashby with respect to modern LARGE squaretop sails). My experience is that you significantly want to increase that in the really light winds. Now the only way to get this twist profile and still have a flat mainsail (little draft) is to derotate your mast and really crank on the downhaul.

On the Blade/Stealth F16 you also want to lift your luff hull clear of the water by doing the wildthing. Taipans are more forgiving in the respect and it doesn't hurt then to much when part of the luff hull is still in contact. However, doing the wildthing on the Taipan really helps as well. Why, it reduces the total wetted surface area by something like 15 - 25 %; this can easily translate into 7% to 10 % more speed. And that is the difference between winning and finshing mid fleet in very light winds.

In light winds you have to keep moving all the time ! Getting up to speed is more difficult then maintaining speed.


One race last year. I was 200 mtr back of a pack of 4 I-20's and 5 F18's in such conditions. I did all the above and coached my boat gentle up to speed. I overtook all boats ahead of me except 1 F18 and I sailed through all the lee sides (wind shadows !) to reach the finish 50 to 150 mtr ahead. Best laugh I ever had; you should have seen their faces. They still claim I had my personal gust (for nearly 400 mtr and nearly 3 minutes while passing the others only 20 mtr downwind !)

I know it was the sail trim, because I knew exactly when I started to really move and what preceded it. I had cranked on alot of downhaul and this allowed me to slacken the mainsail to introduce alot more leech twist while maintaining a shallow draft.

Hope this helps

Wouter

Excellent Wouter! This thread is about to be hijacked..

Attached is a drawing from a book by David Houghton, Wind Strategy - Fernhurst, giving some values for wind shear. I found it most interesting to see how wind direction changes according to what type if wind you have. No wonder a oversheeted mainsail is slow.

One point about twist. While not overpowered and sailing in chop/waves, it's still faster with twist than without even if it by the theory should not be. One theory I heard about this was that as the boat pitches in the waves, the angle of attack changes. Makes sense to me..

I was contacted by a very friendly fellow who had his camera with him during the racing. It seems he has a great number of pictures of all boats. Later this week I will get them all. Both F16's and A-cats.

The first samples can be found here :

http://www.f16.beasts.org/

In the gallery under "events 2006" and then "gulfport A-cat/F16 regatta 2006)

The full resolution scans are available for downloading on the very same site. Just click on the higher resolution link above the pictures itself. Guys with internet explorer can best use the following direct link :

http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=865

The hi-res pictures will not be cropped in halve then.


Now we want some more race reports !

Wouter

Beautiful sunny, light air day in Gulfport today. Short postponement to wait for some breeze. Three races in building breeze, not any trapeze weather.

Matt and Gina had two 3rds and a 2nd (I think) to take home the gold. Gordon was second and Seth/Kelly 3rd. Not a lot of reporting - no big splashes, collisions, protests, etc... Good tight racing on a right hand favored course.

Seth and Hollis port tacked the fleet in race 1.

Matt, Hollis and I were over early in race three. After clearing the start line the top gudgeon/pintle jumped free and put a small twist in the lower gudgeon/pintle. I took a DNF in race three, as I coud not get the rudder back on while on the water. Turns out Seth/Kelly edged me by one point for third. Maybe next time...

The rest of the finishers were: Shannon, Harnden, Caffee, Fred?

BTW, making the main flat (less rotation, more outhaul, firm downhaul and mainsheet) really works in light air. I also found the culprit for my oppressive weather helm. A smidgeon of pigtail from the stopper knot in the rudder was sticking out (on both rudders) which did not allow me to fully lower the rudders. Once we retied/stuffed them in the hole further - they went down another two inches or so.

Woody, Rush and Jennifer were the top 3 in the A Class fleet.

A-cat fleet :

-1- Woody Cope
-2- Rush Bird
-3- Jennifer Lindsay


F16's (7 races in total)

-1- Matt and Gina McDonald
-2- Gordon Isco, Mike Hagan
-3- Seth Stern, Kelly Gray
-4- Tom Shannon [color:"red"] (first time on boat !) [/color]
-5- Chuck and Mavis Harnden
-6- Hollis Caffee
-7- Fred Metcalf, Michael Coffman
-8- Hans Geissler




Indeed, you have just entered on a path of discovery with the superwing mast. In the beginning learn that when you think you are going reasonably well that you should be able to go much faster still. Many new sailors to the Superwing mast have to take this mental hurdle. Then whe you really start looking you'll find different grooves and speed up the boat by 10 to 20 % easily. These discoveries are Great fun !


Wouter

The advice conveyed in this post is equivalent to about a season and a half of trial and error light air racing w/ the Superwing mast... Nearly all of the settings and advice I gleened from non-superwingers over the last two seasons was just wrong / slow... This should be a topic all it's own - it's that dead on...

PK

Indeed, the short version I got Saturday night helped a lot. Much more boat speed upwind in the light stuff on Sunday. Results were first, first and DNF (over early/steerage problems sent me home early) for the three races Sunday.

THANKS.

Tom aka " The Phenom" ,

This was your FIRST Sail in your Blade ??!! Sheesh , no more hints for you !!

PK

Check out the great pictures from the regatta at

2006 GYC A-Class/F16HP Invitational

A big thanks goes out to Gary Hufford from Beachmaster Photography for coming out and spending the day with us.

Jennifer

There is a slight error in the A-Cat results posted earlier. Here are the corrections.

1st Place - Woody Cope
2nd Place - Tony Arends
3rd Place - Jennifer Lindsay
4th Place - Rush Bird

Rush and I tied for third place but I won out in the tie breaker. Hopefully the official results will be post on the internet soon.

Jennifer

We don't nearly give enough credit to our F16 crews. In this Gulfport invitational 2006 we had several female crews and ... !! WOW !! ... take a look at some of the action shots (series) they put in !


http://f16.beasts.org/gallery2/main...amp;g2_itemId=865&g2_navId=x3c4f8f35


This post and all the respect enclosed in it is for you ladies !

We saw in order of appearence :

Kelly Gray
Mavis Harnden
Gina McDonald

and

Michael Coffman


Respect !

Wouter

It all worked out pretty well for me. saturday brought some wind, but not too much, which let me learn a great deal. Sunday brought my local lake conditions and a great environment for 1-up. It all kind a fell in place.

I'd say it was more of a compliment to the design and production of the boat, rather than any sailing talent. That boat is awesome. We were talking Sat night about how responsive the boat is to making (even the slighest) adjustments to all the control lines. The smallest changes can make a huge difference and that makes it really fun.

I really did read Wouter's post Sun AM and applied it. I pulled on all three corners of the sail (outhaul, downhaul and mainsheet) to make it flat. Would that logic be more meaningful as cat rigged, as opposed to sloop (no slot to induce wind sliding across the lee side of the main)?

I can't really tell, but remember that account at the end of the full explanation ? The one were I overtook 4 I-20's and 4 F18's by sailing through their lee to win after I had been over 200 mtr behind ? Were I discovered this light wind trim ?

Well, I was sailing doublehanded sloop rigged with 145 kg on board (= 320 lbs).

Who says F16's can't carry weight in the really light stuff and beat the F18's/I-20's on elapsed time ?

So I guess the advice is no less valuable when sloop rigged as when cat-rigged. Just don't pull on the jib sheet too hard and close off the slot. If you want a flat jib then just pull on its luff tension control or alter you rig tension. I just slacked the jib sheet a little bit so its leech had the same twist as the mainsail to the back of it.

Anything to keep the mainsail breathen properly

Wouter

The old F16 website link won't show the pics mentioned in the above post anymore

You can find them at :

http://beachmaster.smugmug.com/gallery/1327719


Wouter

Tom, it the photo's, which Blade spinnaker is you? Purple or Blue/yellow? And who's is that very dark mainsail? Thanks.

Seth and Kelly: Yellow/green/blue spin (mostly yellow) (t4.9)
Matt and Gina: Purple spin (Blade)
Gordon: Light blue spin (T4.9)
Chuck and Mavis: blue/red spin (Coke bottle green hulls) (Blade)
Fred and Michael: Blue/yellow spin (t4.9)
Tom: only in pic 17
Hollis: not pictured
Hans: multicolored G-Cat

Matt and Gina's main looks very dark (with white batten pockets), but it must be the picture (pic #15) b/c it didn't seem to be much different from Chuck's or mine.

BTW - the Alter Cup Area D-SOuth eliminations will be at GYC the first week of November. They will actually use the Gulfport public beach for launching, but all logistical support will come from GYC. Their RC was very well versed in how to run regattas and handled themselves very well (not that I've been all over the world and am an authority, but they did do a really good job).