The Maryland chapter of the Formula 16 Catamaran class was approved by the West River Sailing Club Executive Board to become a provisional sanctioned one design fleet in November of 2009.  This class is attracting a lot of attention in the performance sailing community because of its non-manufacturer specific qualification formula, its high level of performance, and last but not least because of it’s versatility.  This is a lightweight platform that is designed and built to race two up as a sloop with spinnaker or single handed with a uni-rig (mainsail only) and spinnaker.  These boats race with the same Portsmouth handicap rating in either of these configurations.  Basically when racing with crew the jib is added and when racing single handed the jib is removed.  This versatility results in more boats on the line in that if crew fails to show a skipper can simply race solo and if there is too much breeze to race solo two skippers can join up and race on one boat whereas without this option both single handed boats might remain ashore.  The class minimum boat weight is 240 lb and due to its light weight the F-16 can be beach launched, righted and beach retrieved by a single adult.  With a smaller sail plan the sheet loads are much more manageable for husband/wife and parent/child teams making this a more family and gender friendly boat than other catamarans at this performance level.  Sources of manufacture include the US, Australia and Great Britain.

To learn more about this class and to join in the fun please contact us via email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it