Here the first Blade F18 video. The design now has nearly two seasons of test sailing done.

It is flat water, but the video the better for it. The wind appears to be gusty.

Take a look when the guys push the whole of the leeward bow underwater about halve way into the clip; The boat just sails on without really throwing up much spray or losing much speed at all. The boat just recovers gently. Also notice how there is not much of rooster tales behind the rudders when going for the emergency bare-away. The rudder keep working all through the dive.

But I personally really like the way the hulls rides over the water. There are hardly any bow and stern waves. Even when a gust hits or a the boat sails into a lull, the change of hull attitude doesn't seem to disturb the water surface much at all. Now rooster tales, no splashing.

I certainly hope the Blade F16 is just as good.


http://www.thebeachcats.com/videos/Blade-F18.mpg

If this link only brings you too the video page then it is the 6th video link from the top.

Now lets wait for the video in big waves and see if the hull still handles it well as now.

Wouter

You mean F18 video.

Sorry, a typo.

Wouter

Wouter,
The boat in big waves looks much the same regarding spray the real issue is getting footage of it to prove it.
I was in a 6 metre power boat (with a 65 on back) and when the wind increased and we got into the rough stuff we had a lot of trouble keeping up and no chance of filming. Darn shame.

BTW:- I sould have posted some credits with the video.
Marcus and Karina are sailing the boat and Chris is driving the power boat so I could shoot the film.

can't get it to work... there are a lot of bad links on that site.

Video file is big so give it time to download.

It is 20 mb and it took 2 minutes on my PC to start playing.

Wouter

i just get a quick window saying it is downloading, but it closes in seconds.

it makes my wmp crash.

and I have every codec on the planet.

Yeah well, you and your PC are allergic to anything that has a link to F16's or Wouter, no matter how distant. What did you expect would happen ?

Wouter

hahaha thats true.

Based on the playback, Macs on Maui love Wouter.

open it in Retardnet Explorer a window will pop up asking if you want to save or open. Save it to your desktop, then open file with your normal media viewing program.

If you are trying to do this with Firefox, you will run into issues.

I was able to download it and play it back with no problems. I saved it first to my PC and then played it with Power DVD software.

Played fine for me with Firefox, and I can't play a lot of Windows Media Player stuff, even though I have the latest version...? Very nice video!

Oh dear lord...I need to go sailing soon....but damnit...the skippper was slow to bear away and the crew on the spinnaker - it's floggin'!!!!!!! (bark bark bark)....

Is that in fast forward, the video compression, or my beer goggles?

Brain:

If you get a lot of mov video and don't want to deal with Quicktime as I didn't go and get windows mdeia player classic. It will play mov files. Should solve your problem.

Doug Snell
Hobie 17
Soon to be Nacar A2
www.tcdyc.com

The best free-standing video player I have found so far is the open source VLC. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/


I felt a bit sorry for the Mosquitos who looked like they was almost standing still, but they probably corrected out nicely. About the flogging, I think they was pushing the boat a bit higher then you would on a windward/leeward course..

Looks like you can push these new designs a lot harder than older designs. I know I would not want to stuff the Tornado like they did with the Blade.

Rolf,
They were sailing down a river into lake Alexandrina.
They carried the kite as long as they could hence the flogging.
Once we got into the lake (which is so big you can't see the other side) the breese really got up and the chop became quite steep. This was the footage that I would have really liked to get as it would have shown the Blade F18 in its element. But Unfortunately we couldn't keep up.

BTW:-
I got some really cool footage of the AO14 that I will be sending Darryl. That is by far the best 14ft cat that I have ever seen.
Regards,
Phill

Folks,
For those who could not get the video to play I've uploaded a new version.
If you have been having problems and still interested try again.
Hope this helps.

Phill

Saves a lot of time - This is what I get when clicking on the link. MSN Explorer, Verizon broadband:

Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.


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