A Hobie 17 weighs about 320 lbs. An A-Cat should weigh about 165 lbs. When I sailed the A-Cat what I immediately understood, because I could feel it, was that the boat weighs less than I do. You really feel everything on the boat. Every movement you make goes through the boat.
Image riding a beach cruiser bicycle of about 40 lbs. Then get on a racing bicycle at just under 20 lbs. The reaction and acceleration are the first things that you will notice. That is a pretty good comparison.
I have not seen too many Hobie 17s doing the wild thing downwind. On an A-Cat that is your first concern going around the weather mark. "Can it fly?" and if so "Do I lose too much real estate to make up in speed?"
The Hobie 17 is a nice one-design racer. I do not know the areas that are really big on racing them right now. They had a good number at the Nationals so I am sure there are places. Here, on the West Coast, there are not many of them showing up to regattas.
Price wise a used 17 is really cheap. A used A-Cat is $6,000 to $12,000 maybe more (ie. not cheap), and that depends on competitiveness.
A Cat is a very easy boat to set up alone. That includes pushing it around soft sand. Hobie 17 at the weight of a Hobie 16 may take some help getting around the beach and on the trialer.
Mike, Ben Hall has fixed sweep carbon spreaders, and he is/was the north american champ, so I'm sure it will work for me. Ben advised me to use 60mm of sweep, and the current thinking is 450mm long, the A2 spreaders are 500mm long, but then you risk hitting the shrouds with our spreaders.
I made a simple jig so that these spreaders were at 60mm of sweep at 450mm long. See the photo. I also added a very unscientific upward angle (dihedral angle) of a 1.5" over the 450mm, so that they would be more level once the mast was racked back.
The trade off in weight was worth giving up the adjustability. Plus, if I really need to adjust them I can always just "adjust" them with my dremel tool. I can pop out the delrin end and modify them pretty easily.
From what I understand the only guy that adjusts his spreaders frequently is Lars Guck, I'm probably not going to be adjusting them anyway, so I'm not worried about it. I'm going with fixed diamond wires, as opposed to adjustable diamonds, so I think it will be ok.
Plus the proctor spreaders are $225 once you include shipping, without the mast brackets, and these worked out to be much less cost and much less weight.
Actually, most 17's are heavier than what Dan's talking about. Class minimum is 340#; most weigh above 350#.
They are good sized fleets of 17's on the upper Atlantic Coast, the middle of the country and in the Pacific Northwest.
An A-cat will smoke a H-17 around the buoys with the exception of upwind in blow. Trapezing from the wings on a 17 allow the rig to carry a lot more power than trapezing from the hulls on an A.
The H-17 is a pig off the wind. Just not enough sail area. Then again, it's durable as hell and the only boat I'd want to be on when it's blowing a steady 25. They're realatively cheap, too. A brand new one is only $10K. Used ones go for $2K-$4K, depending on condition.
Pete, Now you've gone and opened up a can of worms asking about speed. Hopefully I wont get flamed for this.
I'll try to be as fair as I can here so I dont start something.
What I've seen is that an Acat is untouchable upwind, up to the point that you start breaking stuff, like 18knts-20knts wind speed. Downwind the acat goes "wild" and sails off the wind fast but not very deep. Wild is a downwind reach flying a hull. Most modern spin boats, F18, I20, F16, HT, etc can go deeper and will beat an acat dead downwind. But in terms of straight line speed, an acat is about even with a F18 or F18HT but the angles are differient. I have been out on my HT and an acat has kept pace with me on a reach and I had my spin up. I was sailing higher with a spin than you would in a race, and so was the acat, but we were about even, it was an interesting comparison. The acat has 14sq m main and I had up 40sq (main and spin), so that should give you an idea of the efficiency of the A.
Now in a race, the acat is still fast. Peter Johnstone came in second two years ago on an XJ, in one of the round Jamestown races. Charlie Barmonde and Ben Burley won the race on an i20 and I came in third on the HT.
Peter spanked everyone to the weather mark and then Charlie passed him down wind on his first or second jibe, because Charlie was going to much deeper, I passed Peter on about my third jibe and then I crashed, so Peter was able to pass us and we never saw him back upwind.
What Peter J/Landy/ and others were advocating is adding a spin to the acat, but that hasnt gained momentum. The class has been pretty vocal about the simplicity of the A and the easy of set up, etc. Adding a spin would take something away from the simplicity. Plus most A's are sailed in one design fleets, so it doesnt really matter the your vmg isnt as good as a spin boat, all of the other A's are sailing similiar downwind angles.
The other thing about the A is that it has a huge amount of development in the class focused on sails, rigs, and tuning. The only other boat with that much attention paid to it in rig/sail development and tuning is the Tornado. So you get very efficient sails, and very efficient rigs, and lots of used/spare sails. Good news/bad news here, you will be sailing against very talented guys with the latest technology and new sails, but I think thats a great way to become a better sailor.
Plus I like the fact that I can sail it alone, without crew, rig it in 15mins, move it around easily by myself, use beachwheels and not have to fool with dunking a trailer.
I like the fact that I can sail it alone, without crew, rig it in 15mins, move it around easily by myself, use beachwheels and not have to fool with dunking a trailer.
I have a 17. I started this thread (Doug not Dave Snell), because I am thinking of getting an A2. We have a VERY good A cat fleet out of Houston Yacht Club in Texas. The 17 is a GREAT boat. Look at a lot of the regattas in High Portsmouth class, the rating is great and the boat often finishes at the top. As for moving it single handed, with beach wheels it is not a problem. Little tricky getting on the wheels as they want to roll the cradles under. Just put the rudders on BEFORE you take it off the trailer. Only problem is getting mast raised. You need a second person. I an going to try putting boat on backwards with stern on the rollers. Use the front mast support on trailer to hold mast. I think once the mast is raised the angle leaning forward will hold it up while I attach the bridle. It is a fun boat. And as Mat said, above 20 the ONLY good single handed boat.
I sold my 17 a couple years back and bought the Tiki http://www.wharram.com/ . The 17 was a great boat, but getting to the beach here is all but impossible! My intention with the A cat is travel; down to the Keys, up the Gulf, maybe even New England and Texas.
Also, sailing anything above 20 is just too much work!
The Area D Alter Cup Eliminations last year were interesting as we had a couple of competitive A-class sailors lined up against some good folks sailing spinnaker boats (Bob Curry on an I-17R, Brian Lambert on the CFR-20, Kirk Newkirk on the Tiger, Harry Newkirk on an I-20).
Upwind, the A-boats typically were the fastest, faster than even the CFR-20. Conditions for the event were 10-12 on the first day and 5-7 on the second day. Downwind, the A-cats were never as deep as any of the spinnaker boats whether in wild or mild mode. We were going very close to the same speed forward as the I-20's but not as deep when we were flying a hull downwind. The CFR-20 was faster forward and deeper all the time. We were probably even with the F-18's speed wise also again when flying a hull. I don't think the F-18's sailed quite as deep as the I-20 but they still had a faster downwind VMG than the A-cat. I thought we would be about even downwind VMG with the I-17R but Curry was catching me downwind. The corrected times between Curry, myself, and the top I-20's were very close in most of the races. The CFR was killing everyone on corrected in most of the races. The top A-cat was consistently correcting out on the F-18's.
It'll be interesting to see if the data from this event contributes to any adjustments to current ratings in the future.
Regarding the H-17, I've never sailed one but I can see where the relatively lower aspect rig combined with the wings can make this boat a giant killer in big breeze. First think about the righting moment upwind and then think about how being on the aft corner of the wing downwind can really lift the leeward bow up in a big blow. When it's approaching our wind limit in the A-cats (22 knots), you'll see most of the sailors max position aft on the windward hull to get maximum leverage on the leeward bow.
A-cats are surprisingly fast upwind in a blow. With the new twisty big head sail designs, they depower extremely well. In a fleet of 20' and under beach cats, I think only the Tornado and M-20 would be faster upwind. At the 2004 Slip To Ship distance race, we had a 7 mile beat in 12-14 knots of breeze. I was going higher and slightly faster upwind than both well sailed I-20's and a well sailed Nacra 6.0 NA. Only Dennis Palin on his carbon 200 lb 18 square meter beat me to Ship Island and it was only by about 1 minute. I think the sail/rig on the A-cat is continuing to evolve in terms of performance while the rigs and sails on the other boats have not progressed much (pin head sail on the Nacra, same sail cut on the I-20 for the last few years).
All of the above is based upon my own race observations.
Check out our website and register. www.tcdyc.com I am Hobie17 there. If you ever get to Texas, give me a shout. There is a REAL good group of A cats at HYC that Bob sails with.
Good Sailing
Doug Snell Hobie 17 Soon to be Nacra A2 www.tcdyc.com 281-326-2702
Bob: Since you mention heavy air, I'd like to add my two cents about performance. I've sailed the H 17 in some fairly heavy air and never noticed any attempt by the boat to pitch-pole or even submerge. The few times I did stuff the bow, it came right back up, almost of it's own accord. Of course my weight was 210! I'm a little leary of the small volume I'm seeing on the new A cat bows.
I think there are a lot of boats better than the Hobie 17, I just think it is a good cheap single handed boat, and has a GREAT handicap rating !!! On corrected time it does VERY well ! And Andrew is right 18 sq is SWEET boat, Palin is deadly on it. What hurts it is having to take it apart or have a tilt trailer. One reason I want A2 is fleet at HYC and I will soon have the money to spare.
Doug Snell
Re: Hobie 17 vs A-Cat
[Re: bvining]
#65719 02/10/0607:05 AM02/10/0607:05 AM
In a past message I mentioned philosophical concerns. Specifically, I miss the old Hobie days when almost everyone sailed the 16. It was a lot of fun! Here in Florida beach sailing is almost dead because of lack of beach access. That is a socio-political problem, has nothing to do with boats.
Currently, there are 3 A cat regattas scheduled within a short drive from my home, and others, out of state that are still close enough to be considered.
The A cat dynamic that impresses me most has nothing to do with the boat, it's the people. The January regatta down in the Keys had over 40 participants. I would guess that was the first class regatta of that size in over 15 years! I'm talking about Florida of course because that's where I live, that's my world!
A cats are a happenin' thing! It's not the boat, it's the people.
Re: Hobie 17 vs A-Cat
[Re: fin.]
#65721 02/10/0610:39 AM02/10/0610:39 AM
