What Happened to the Formula 14?

I don't think there was ever an actual F14 class organization, there were a group of sailors who were souping up Hobie 14's by adding squaretop mains and spins to them. Pretty good cheap rocketship is you are light enough.

Here's a couple on the "beach" at Spring Fever a few years ago.

These both used mains from WhirlwindSails.com and hooter furling headsails rather than spins with snuffers. Dan Berger was doing a lot with this, one of the boats is his, check out his album of other F14 pictures. I think they wanted to call these FX14's. You around here Dan?

They did come up with a F14 "class" and actually had a class race several years ago at Spring Fever. The class that year included Dan, Jason, Rick White and others I don't remember. Dan brought down 3 boats from VA.

kind of like adding a turbo charger to a Suzuki sidekick... isn't it?..

I know i am gonna pay for that comment.. i am just bitter that i am to FAT to sail a h14

I do remember a couple of boats spending more time turtled than upright that year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsQhBJb6Teo

~~ Here's the same one but about 9 min. long..... this flys past the 16's, and about anything else that gets in it's way...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nrCYTxQDtQ

Thanks, Philip. I seem to remember being the only boat (your Nacra!!) on it's side at Spring Fever one year!? Of course, the only reason I was on YOUR boat was because my P19 sank. Details, details.

It is true that one of the "F14s" was turtled a lot one year. The guy had no experience on it and was too heavy for a 14. The rest of us were OK.

Rick had a Wave with a screacher that was pretty sick. The rest of us had 14s with Hooters a la Bob Curry.

The boats are pretty fun without the screacher, but they are awesome with it. I had trouble righting mine, even with the screacher furled, but that is the only issue. In the big wind, you furl the sail and you have a pretty fast obie 14, downwind it is a scary ride and you can't get far enough back on the boat. The problem with that, is that there is so much lift, you end up going over backwards.

I abandoned the 14s because the 14 fleet dried up around here. I went to a Supercat 15 and I'm working on putting a spinnaker on it right now. The whole idea is a single hand boat with a lot of power, but easy to manage. I wanted something with a little more buoyancy in the bows, too.

I think I may have stuck with the F14 if I had bought a Paper Tiger I was looking at. It was the right recipe.