best wind for a FOOTY?

[dostacos]

is there any condition that a footy would do better than larger saiboats?

maybe ghosting under extremely light winds?

or do they always get beat by the larger boats:confused:

Dan
waiting by the mailbox for my FOOTY

[messabout]

I believe that a Footy would be far better than a larger boat if one were to attempt to transport it by unicycle. Aside from that or similar scenarios, the Footy has a great disadvantage. A boat such as an IOM has a mast that reaches five feet above the water surface. There is almost always more air up there than is found nearer the water surface.

Think in terms of power to weight ratio and the Footy might have a chance. A really big footy sail might have 150 sq. in. and have a boat weight of one pound. The IOM has a sail area of around 600 sq. in. and weighs more than eight pounds. On that basis the Footy will win. If I were to bet my lunch money, I’d place it on the IOM, EC12, Marblehead, or whatever. As soon as the wind came up to 3 or 4 Kn the game would be over.

[Niel]

If overall speed is an issue buy an trans-ocean racing multihull. You may be able to find a second hand one in France. You will need a crew to go sailing though, unless you are very fit.

But seriously, Dostacos - speed and performance are relative. I wouldn’t enter an Odom into an M Class race even though I could register it as an M. But the Odom’s do have a strong following even though none of them can beat a Skalpel.

Footies are great boats for their limited size. They go superbly upwind and sail bow down before the wind in most wind strengths. I’ve sailed my Bantams in winds I would never subject my M boat or 36/600 to.

I’ve found my boat can often out point the larger r/c classes in my club and it takes less wind to get them started. But Footies have there own idiosyncrasies (as due most other classes), just a completely unfamiliar set of them if you come to footies from some other class. The challenge that all the guys who post advise and opinions here, and all the people who have embraced this class, have taken up is to test their ideas and their building skills in order to refine and improve our collective understanding of what these boats are about.

For such cute and simple looking boats there is a lot of planning going on to get one in the water. Most people in this day and age assemble boats from kits if they do any boatbuilding at all. With a model boat a meter or longer, blowing the keel fin location by 1/8th inch may not effect the boat’s performance that much or disqualify it from having a rating in it’s Class. Doing the same while building a Footy could be a major error (it also could lead to an unintended breakthrough). With many new builders the largest stumbling block is to find the best way to mount the r/c gear in their hull. And, after all that stuff is in the hull, rebalancing the boat on its lines. With a 12 to 13 inch waterline how she floats is critical to getting the most performance from the boat.

So in many ways, not just the sailing, Footies inspire and require a more rounded involvement in model yachting than just about any other class of r/c sailboat. That more than makes up for the perception of them as being low performance boats.

[dostacos]

If overall speed is an issue buy an trans-ocean racing multihull. You may be able to find a second hand one in France. You will need a crew to go sailing though, unless you are very fit.

But seriously, Dostacos - speed and performance are relative. I wouldn’t enter an Odom into an M Class race even though I could register it as an M. But the Odom’s do have a strong following even though none of them can beat a Skalpel.

Footies are great boats for their limited size. They go superbly upwind and sail bow down before the wind in most wind strengths. I’ve sailed my Bantams in winds I would never subject my M boat or 36/600 to.

I’ve found my boat can often out point the larger r/c classes in my club and it takes less wind to get them started. But Footies have there own idiosyncrasies (as due most other classes), just a completely unfamiliar set of them if you come to footies from some other class. The challenge that all the guys who post advise and opinions here, and all the people who have embraced this class, have taken up is to test their ideas and their building skills in order to refine and improve our collective understanding of what these boats are about.

For such cute and simple looking boats there is a lot of planning going on to get one in the water. Most people in this day and age assemble boats from kits if they do any boatbuilding at all. With a model boat a meter or longer, blowing the keel fin location by 1/8th inch may not effect the boat’s performance that much or disqualify it from having a rating in it’s Class. Doing the same while building a Footy could be a major error (it also could lead to an unintended breakthrough). With many new builders the largest stumbling block is to find the best way to mount the r/c gear in their hull. And, after all that stuff is in the hull, rebalancing the boat on its lines. With a 12 to 13 inch waterline how she floats is critical to getting the most performance from the boat.

So in many ways, not just the sailing, Footies inspire and require a more rounded involvement in model yachting than just about any other class of r/c sailboat. That more than makes up for the perception of them as being low performance boats.

nah, speed is NOT my need, I am currently building a 1/48 scale Vacu TUG I was just wondering if we EVER could keep up with the big boys. What started my thinking was a picture of a FOOTY that was captioned as basically catching a much larger sail boat. So I was wondering if we might be able to sail in lighter winds which I guess would depend on our weight to sail carried

[Angus_DECEASED]

Interesting observation from the UK MYA President’s Day in Birmingham was that the best Footys were very nearly as fast as ho-hum MicroMagics (about twice the size). The early myths about Footys not being able to sail properly or falling over every time the baby burps have long been proved to be nonsense. To me they are much more interesting as a design probem tyhan the more restricted classes like the IOM or the very mature ones like the 10R or A class, which have been around for so long that pretty much evry conceivable idea has been tried at least once.

Enjoy yourself!