Nacra 15 FCS for fun

[Stanno]

I should also say that the teams in the N17 now are fantastic young sailors chasing the Waterhouse / Darmanin benchmark of performance over a long period of time. Keep an eye out for the Jake Liddell & Lucy Copeland (World ranking 16), Brin Liddell & Rhiannon Brown (ranked 23rd with a bullet), and young Taswegian (and former N15 Youth World Champion) Will Cooley and his crew Amy Potter. Gun fitness coach Emma Jones and her crew are also there and thereabouts as part of the pool. So we will be well served over the next 3 Olympics by this pool of talent.

 

[PitPater]

Your correct, for young sailors targeting the N17 it will muddy the path quite a bit, even more so given its a mixed crew class. Unfortuanately it may force some to train elsewhere other than Aus where there is more access to both boats ... of course I guess maybe that is happening now

Either way its too bad, having said that Nacra told me when I bought the boat that there are only 9 F15s in Canada, couldnt tell you where they are but none nearby ... and I couldnt begin to tell you the number of olympic configured N17s in Canada but it is likely small and quite aways East of here. Will be interesting to see if the entry of Canada into the SailGp F50 and its early success in that circuit so far will change things

 

[martin 'hoff]

Feeling spoiled here in Florida. We have a very active little fleet ranging 9 to 15 boats at the start line.

Things are real bubbly right now in preparation for Worlds in FLL late February. We had Nationals in Oct (Clearwater), an ODP clinic late Nov (Miami), Open Orange Bowl Dec 26-30 (Miami), an informal regatta in 2 weeks in FLL (connected to a US Sailings Open event for other classes.

We'll go to Clearwater for a clinic (Robbie is running clinics almost every week this winter) mid-Feb. Then Worlds.

Too much fun.

 

[PitPater]

Sounds great....Let me know if you want to use my C foils at worlds, only been used once

 

[PitPater]

The Foiling Viper foils well to windward and with the rudder rake and diff makes it all a lot safer and faster as you can adjust as needed and not just live with it until you crash.

@Mako73 any chance you could get your sons to take some pictures of the rudder raking mechanism that the Viper uses, were trying to figure out a system that might best work on the F15 FCS ... maybe the Viper is using something we havnt seen yet...dont seem to be too many outfitted with the system as yet

 

[martin 'hoff]

With @PitPater planning to visit RedGearRacing in Clearwater, training is a topic. We just had Ian (from RGR) visiting us in Miami. Everything's getting fizzy here with Worlds looming

As we evolve, our boat handling in general ends up being very very close to what Gunnar covers on this (excellent!) recorded F18 clinic. The whiteboard sessions are partly tactics, partly boat handling; the on-the-boat parts are pure gold:

- Day 1 –
- Day 2 –
- Day 3 –

 

[martin 'hoff]

Nacra 15 Worlds starts in a few weeks in Ft Lauderdale.

Video of a fun (non-foiling) race in mixed fleet -

 

[PitPater]

Hi Martin

Funny to see it outfitted with the non foiling rudders. Looks like you are flying along at a pretty good pace despite them, what was the wind speed that day looks like it was wild at times?

Hows the upwind training coming? Good luck in a couple of weeks, keep us posted as to how its going

After much back and forth with Sam, he recommended that we go with the N17 raking arrangement (with some in-house modifications)...apparently there have been some issues with the swing arm style, that have led to failures and movement issues. Also not prepared to punch a hole in the transoms until we can see for ourselves how the boat handles raking. Going to mock it up once the parts arrive (only ordered the raking mechanism and bottom gudgeons), see if we can work out the bugs there first before we install it on the boat

Have fun

R

 

[Stanno]

Hi Martin

Funny to see it outfitted with the non foiling rudders. Looks like you are flying along at a pretty good pace despite them, what was the wind speed that day looks like it was wild at times?

Hows the upwind training coming? Good luck in a couple of weeks, keep us posted as to how its going

After much back and forth with Sam, he recommended that we go with the N17 raking arrangement (with some in-house modifications)...apparently there have been some issues with the swing arm style, that have led to failures and movement issues. Also not prepared to punch a hole in the transoms until we can see for ourselves how the boat handles raking. Going to mock it up once the parts arrive (only ordered the raking mechanism and bottom gudgeons), see if we can work out the bugs there first before we install it on the boat

Have fun

R

Love how you guys are pushing hard and taking a one design to places unknown!!

Have just ordered a new starboard L rudder for the 15 here in Sydney so hopefully son will be back foiling around.... his other N15 is for sale .... no takers!!

 

[martin 'hoff]

Hi Martin

Funny to see it outfitted with the non foiling rudders. Looks like you are flying along at a pretty good pace despite them, what was the wind speed that day looks like it was wild at times?

Hows the upwind training coming? Good luck in a couple of weeks, keep us posted as to how its going

After much back and forth with Sam, he recommended that we go with the N17 raking arrangement (with some in-house modifications)...apparently there have been some issues with the swing arm style, that have led to failures and movement issues. Also not prepared to punch a hole in the transoms until we can see for ourselves how the boat handles raking. Going to mock it up once the parts arrive (only ordered the raking mechanism and bottom gudgeons), see if we can work out the bugs there first before we install it on the boat

Thank you! Yeah we have good pace in breeze on the C foils. It was 14-17kt base gusting into 21-24. So... sporty. At one point we were on a footing upwind, a tad distracted looking for a shallows marker and a gust that came from the aft quarter sent us swimming. Lol.

C boards are actually fast. Faster in many conditions, in particular upwind and/or light breeze.

Interesting about the rake system. Curious as what you figure out.

 

[martin 'hoff]

Love how you guys are pushing hard and taking a one design to places unknown!!

Have just ordered a new starboard L rudder for the 15 here in Sydney so hopefully son will be back foiling around.... his other N15 is for sale .... no takers!!

What happened with your rudder?

I've spotted a new YouTube channel, Australian father/son (i think), with coaching, on an FCS. Don't have the link handy.

 

[martin 'hoff]

 

[PitPater]

Well that looks impressive, dont think Stewart and I could get up to 18 knts in 7 knts .... surprisingly we have been able to foil in 7 -8 knts at times ... (we need to be doing about 10 knts over the water to be able to foil) but our max speed in those conditions is about 13-14 knts maybe 15 knts for brief moments

The one or two times we tried the C Foils I have to admit that there was a notable difference upwind from a regular cat including the F18 (hadnt done much with the FCS at that point so no frame of reference to it at that time and we havnt used them since). Dont recall the downwind being much different, but again not a lot of time spent with them period and I dont think I had the Atlas 2 yet so no data on them either

@Stanno: Yes what happened to your L Rudder? Still hate the fact that they are flip up, can cause no end of grief or panic on the way in or way out at times (particularly when you are solo). We dinged one off the bottom on the way out one day fortunately it wasnt too bad and Stewart did a nice repair job on it...but so far surprisingly no real issues with the rudders

Hard to believe you have not had any takers, think that thing would get snapped up immediately up here. All sorts of guys trying different things here to get their old A Class or even a Hobie 18 foiling ... not going well for them thus far ... some of the ideas are rather unique to say the least

As to the raking we will see, Stewart met up with a fellow last week who had some inside knowledge on the N17 in rake mode so hard to say how it will compare to the F15. Sam did remind me that the older foiling A Class boats had L rudders and that he expected the raking performance to be similar based on his experience ... I expect the turning loads on the F15 L rudders will be high given the sized of them compared to the T rudders so I am guessing if we have issues thats likely where we might see it. He mentioned the the N17 set up is the same one used on the F20 ... so relatively speaking the F15 should have lower rudder loads than on the F20 and N17 ... guess we will find out

R

 

[martin 'hoff]

Well that looks impressive, dont think Stewart and I could get up to 18 knts in 7 knts .... surprisingly we have been able to foil in 7 -8 knts at times ... (we need to be doing about 10 knts over the water to be able to foil) but our max speed in those conditions is about 13-14 knts maybe 15 knts for brief moments

The one or two times we tried the C Foils I have to admit that there was a notable difference upwind from a regular cat including the F18 (hadnt done much with the FCS at that point so no frame of reference to it at that time and we havnt used them since). Dont recall the downwind being much different, but again not a lot of time spent with them period and I dont think I had the Atlas 2 yet so no data on them either

@Stanno: Yes what happened to your L Rudder? Still hate the fact that they are flip up, can cause no end of grief or panic on the way in or way out at times (particularly when you are solo). We dinged one off the bottom on the way out one day fortunately it wasnt too bad and Stewart did a nice repair job on it...but so far surprisingly no real issues with the rudders

Hard to believe you have not had any takers, think that thing would get snapped up immediately up here. All sorts of guys trying different things here to get their old A Class or even a Hobie 18 foiling ... not going well for them thus far ... some of the ideas are rather unique to say the least

As to the raking we will see, Stewart met up with a fellow last week who had some inside knowledge on the N17 in rake mode so hard to say how it will compare to the F15. Sam did remind me that the older foiling A Class boats had L rudders and that he expected the raking performance to be similar based on his experience ... I expect the turning loads on the F15 L rudders will be high given the sized of them compared to the T rudders so I am guessing if we have issues thats likely where we might see it. He mentioned the the N17 set up is the same one used on the F20 ... so relatively speaking the F15 should have lower rudder loads than on the F20 and N17 ... guess we will find out

R

We don't think 18kt on 7kt is possible on this boat. Nor visible on screen on that vid. The videos look nice. More like 9kt tws in the gusts, 14-16kt top speed. Man and a girl actually.

With the N17 setup the pins are very different diameter. Might be better to just use the whole setup from a 17. Rudder heads, rudders...

 

[PitPater]

Yes seems a bit high performance than I would expect for those conditions, as you are fighting the drag on the foils ... but then again Stewart and I are at a crew weight of about 330 lbs and are on the high side I imagine for the boat, DS gives us some extra horsepower to be sure but still we couldnt hit that speed even on flat water in those conditions ... mostly doing a "drunken sailor" thing chasing our own apparent wind

I will send a drawing across to your email, but in short the plan is too make up new bushings for the rudder side gudgeons and then run a high strength stainless rod (17-4PH) through the rudder gudgeons and N17 gudgeons with a couple of nuts doubled to keep everything aligned. This keeps us on our current rudder centerline (we dont have a lot of extra transom real estate for the N17 brackets as is so you would end with your rudder centerline further outboard...dont know if that is and issue or not) ... try pricing out the cost of going with a Nacra N17 back end ...its silly think around 8K USD. Sam actually sent me to a link from Xploder could buy an A Class rear end kit for around $3500 USD. He thought you might actuall be able to run them on the F15!

https://exploder.info/product/a-cat-rudders-set-model-2019/
https://exploder.info/product/a-cat-set-of-adjustable-hinges-carbon-lever-system/

 

[Stanno]

Kids in the video are from up in Queensland ... they are enjoying the stoke of the whole foiling thing!!! Great to see!!

My sion and his crew were sending it one day on starboard when the port rudder kicked up and the boat slewed violently sideways, loading up the starboard rudder - the cat equivalent of a F14 flat spin in Top Gun I guess - and then the kids flew thew the air off the traps and wiped out. After we did head counts and got them back on board and slowly sailed back to the club (the kids were pretty shaken up) we noticed the starboard rudder foil had flexed / torn as per attached pics....

 

[PitPater]

Wow! Thats interesting because as I was telling Martin earlier in this thread we had issues with the rudders kicking up frequently mid foil and resulting in the sudden spin (think there is video of it somewhere along the line earlier in this thread) ... fortunately it never resulted in that kind of damage ... happened twice one day when we were drag racing an A Class. Which brings me to my 2nd gripe about those flip up rudders I found that the adjustment is hair trigger ... slightly too far forward or backward and its either too tight and I can barely unlock the rudders or they pop up randomly mid flight... now have the position marked with a line to make sure they are in the right spot. Anyway thats brutal damage, going to check the rudder position more frequently especially once we start raking them, thats hard to come back from

Great picture of the kids riding high, I want a picture of us like that one day, we will have to get somebody out with a chase boat one day .... still trying to get better drone footage

 

[SplitShot]

Hi all,

This is Riley House (the skipper from the youtube videos), we are an Aussie male/ female team, both 16. we've had the FCS kit for about 5 weeks or so now and absolutely loving every second of it!!! the boat never fails to impress me! In that video, we may have had a gust of up to 9knots but have proof that we reached 18knots! you can find plenty more footage on our Instagram and Facebook @splitshot_racing !!

later in the year Bella and I are heading to Belgium for the Nacra 15 European championships back on the c-boards. I'm wondering how everyone finds the transitions between foiling and non-foiling. is it something that takes some time to get used to again or will the conversion off the foils feel better/ easier? any thoughts are much appreciated as we are trying to plan our year ahead and decide what will give us the best chance in Europe!! cheers,

Riley

 

[martin 'hoff]

Hi all,

This is Riley House (the skipper from the youtube videos), we are an Aussie male/ female team, both 16. we've had the FCS kit for about 5 weeks or so now and absolutely loving every second of it!!! the boat never fails to impress me! In that video, we may have had a gust of up to 9knots but have proof that we reached 18knots! you can find plenty more footage on our Instagram and Facebook @splitshot_racing !!

later in the year Bella and I are heading to Belgium for the Nacra 15 European championships back on the c-boards. I'm wondering how everyone finds the transitions between foiling and non-foiling. is it something that takes some time to get used to again or will the conversion off the foils feel better/ easier? any thoughts are much appreciated as we are trying to plan our year ahead and decide what will give us the best chance in Europe!! cheers,

Riley

Hi Riley! Great to have you here too!

We started on the FCS – I sail with my son Alessandro (13yo/47yo) – and swap for the C boards for class events.

We actually find the C boards quite a bit harder to sail well downwind, and a very different "weight configuration" and behavior in medium to sporty conditions. In fact, just keeping the pointy side up is tricky on C boards in sporty conditions. And there's a bunch of modes in medium-light air, depending on where you put weight for heat/depth vs base wind/gust wave conditions, etc.

We have been sailing with the C boards exclusively for the last 8-6 months, in preparation for N15 Worlds. We find that we have a ton more fun on FCS boards, but we find it hard to get back into the "C mode". So we've parked the FCS boards for a while.

Once the Worlds are through (in 2 weeks!) – we'll swap back to FCS boards and just have fun. We have a couple long distance races we'll do with the FCS kit.

 

[PitPater]

In that video, we may have had a gust of up to 9knots but have proof that we reached 18knots!

Hi Riley!
Nice to have you aboard. Yes with a light crew anything is probably possible as that was what the boat was originally designed for, no question it can certainly can surprise you at times performance wise. At those wind speeds given our crew weight, wave and tidal conditions in our area we arnt going to get there. We use the Vakaros Atlas 2 fixed to the front crossbar when we sail and find a difference of 1 - 1.5 knts at times between the GoPro and the Atlas (the latter being more conservative and likely more accurate given its higher sampling rate). No matter getting up into the higher teens in those conditions is impressive @Stanno's lads and Martin and his son might be able to give you an idea of their performance numbers in those conditions.

We sail only on the FCS foils these days so Martin and @Stanno's guys can probably give you solid information with regard to the difference between sailing on the FCS Foils and the C Foils

Sounds like you have an exciting season ahead of you, good luck ... keep the videos coming and post a few here now and then so we can see how you are making out

R