Hello everyone,
Last Saturday the Air Capitol Model Sailing Club in Wichita, Kansas held it’s 6th race of the season. It was a very light air day, which made racing a real challenge, but the REAL story of the day was the addition of two Formula 48 catamarans–one skippered by Ian Sammis (who has sold some Nightmare kits–his cat was based on the outrigger designs of the Nightmare) and Scott Loesch–who has a rather slick self-righting mechanism built into his boat.
Because of the light air, the performance wasn’t at the level the boats are capable of, but on occasion (when a decent gust would hit) you would see a glimpse of their potential! I’m going to try and figure out how to post a picture of the boats here in this message or a future message. Enjoy!
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Air Capitol Model Sailing Club
www.acmsc.org
Yes last weekend we had a first F48 event. Scott Loesch had a F48 plus about 3 inches! So I would call it a F51. Anyways he had bascially the same righting system they put on the old pop up manufacturing catamarans which tightens one sidestay as it loosens the other. He also had some sort of a moveable ballast that moved from side to side and also controlled the sheeting at the same time. The wind started out really good but then lightened up after a couple of races with puffs coming in every 15 minutes or so and lasting several minutes. after the first race he was starting to tear the moveable ballast off the boat…trying to speed it up as i was cleaning his clock! I usually would not brag about this sort of thing but he is always talking about how this boat of his is going to whip up on me so I dont mind telling you exactly how it went down.(Also he is a friend of mine so we like badgering each other) Anyways all that extra crap on the boat did not work, was complicated, and not worth the time or effort. I had a basic catamaran design with a electronic pod in the middle of the boat. My boat even in the first two races was much faster without the moveable ballast. Weight is definately a major factor in these boats. Overall it was a good day of testing, I ended up winning the F48 fleet and my catamaran actually tacks FAST, and accelerates quickly. More pics to come tommorrow.
Ian Sammis
Ian -
congrats to you and your sailing partner Scott! Glad to hear of some F-48 exposure beginning to take place. Looks like I need to get back to work on the trimaran as I now have an excuse for a road-trip next summer!
By the way - found a sponsor who provided two large brass cup trophies - one for F-48 and one for MultiONE class national champs as traveling trophies. Time to get the pockets of boats togeter for a multihull regatta next year?
Will ge some photos of the trrophies and post in the near future. That might spur some on toward building.
