Well, enough with the fine details; you can take off your reading glasses now, then please move a fe

I’ve only had my hands on Nacra for a few days, so I admit I’m still figuring this boat out; there’s a lot I haven’t tested yet. However, the boat hits the water on Friday and there’s a sailing event scheduled for December 21 , so let me jump the gun a bit and give you my Quick-Look impression based on a first date. :-) New Nacra for the Net
The RL Nacra 17 is a boat born with a mission. The design came straight from the Olympic competition specs for Rio 2016, and the first versions hit the water months ago. This boat has racing in its heart, brain, woodbury outlet new york and yes, it’s brawn too. Take a look:
Dutch (Kain) is no stranger to contemporary race boat emulations; his VO-70 and OD-65 Volvos are accurate and delightfully detailed mesh craftwork. His remarkable level of skill and care are evidenced in the Mesh Shop Nacra 17 as well. Here are just a few close-ups woodbury outlet new york to prove my point:
The second image above is a close-up view of the footing for the two-piece carbon mast. It shows a remarkably well-done minor detail; it’s a true-to-life jam cleat. If Dutch left it out, no one would have missed it. Well… he didn’t leave it out . :-)
The third image shows a closeup of the mainsheet tackle. The Nacra actually has a working mainsheet, something I still marvel at in SL. Although every RL sailboat has main lines, it was not included on SL boats until this past summer, when Motor Loon, Dutch Xenobuilder, Qyv Inshan, and Craig Ktaba decided it was time ‘to get more real.’ (Did I miss anybody’s name? ) :-)
Well, enough with the fine details; you can take off your reading glasses now, then please move a few boatlengths back to get an overview. As the picture below demonstrates, the Nacra-17 is size-wise midway between two other popular SL catamarans: the Trudeau HepCat and the WildWind Wildcat45 .
Like those other boats, woodbury outlet new york the Nacra 17 is designed to accommodate two sailors. Each can hike through eight positions (four port and four starboard ) to help balance the boat for a high-speed, thrill ride.
Although it’s obvious I like this build a lot, let me give virtual sailors a fair heads-up warning here before I continue. The Nacra 17 uses the BWind wind system and it is not WWC compliant. It also uses the BWind 2.5 variance scheme , and there’s no wind shadow component.
Those precepts may be hard for some sailors woodbury outlet new york to swallow; for others, it may indicate progress to a different, new standard. I frankly don’t know yet, but I do know that Dutch is trying to sort this out for his boats in a way that guarantees a realistic sailing and racing paradigm in the future. Performance
There’s a “ cruising ” mode that acts like a standard BWind boat, and there’s a “ racing ” mode that’s adjustable through a tablet interface. ( You can get a free tablet here , and don’t forget to pick up a copy of the manual . It discusses how the wind variance works. )
The tablet is very easy to use and it gives a skipper or RD a handful of fixed BWind options for wind direction and intensity. Once those are set, any boats in the vicinity can lock the same wind definition to race. HUDs
The boat’s com channel is not adjustable, but that’s probably okay since there are only a few, critical chat commands. Sheeting the sails, turning the tiller, and hiking the skipper are all done with arrow key combinations.
That’s a potential problem since sailing with overlapping key clicks can get pretty messy, particularly when you’re trying to take a sharp turn around a race mark and you urgently need to do many things at once.
If you race BWind boats, you also know that the keyboard arrow keys are woefully inadequate to adjust the sheets on close haul. A click of the up or down key will give you a sail adjustment woodbury outlet new york that’s totally random and far greater than you intended. You often have to toggle the keys back and forth to get the setting you actually want.
Dutch is aware of these issues, and he’s added a simple button-control HUD for the skipper (shown above right). The HUD lets you flip the headsail from genniker to jib, trim the sheets, or hike the sit position.
As shown in the image to the right, the Nacra 17 also has a numerical display HUD that provides basic information about boat speed, compass heading, as well as Apparent Wind and sail angles. The HUD also shows the numerical heel angle to help skipper and crew adjust the hike positions.
Speaking of heel angle, the boat will capsize if you tilt more than 40 . That agrees nicely with the heel effect in the Wildcat45 , where the maximum acceleration occurs at 35 and the boat flips at 45 . The Nacra 17 doesn’t pitch pole like the Wildcat though, so that’s one less thing you need to worry about. :-)
The boat is tuned nicely to sail like a catamaran. It noticeab