(Quote)
“They are being included because if they weren't, there wouldn't be an F16 class in Australia (or South Africa either)”

I wouldn’t quite put it that way, instead I would say that the F16 is an exciting “concept” and the fact that, in Australia the concept has been adopted so readily by a group of Mosquitoes sailers and now the Cobras as well illustrates this as they are the classes that could “convert” their cats the most readily. The Mosquito and Cobra owners already own their cats and obviously really like them (and their respective classes) so why should they forsake them and all buy new fully compliant F16’s when with the least amount of outlay they can “upgrade” them to be able be a part of this F16 concept/family as well as being class legal in their own right by just removing the minimum amount of gear from their cats? Don’t worry; the advent of many more F16’s in Australia is only a matter of a few short months away. In South Australia alone, over this winter there is a minimum of four (maybe more) fully compliant F16’s (production Blades and Taipans) being readied/built for the next summer sailing season and together with the three or four that sailed last season will greatly boost the overall numbers here. There are new production F16 Blades being built as we speak with the first only a whisker away from sailing completion and the second well under way. So although the actual number of F16’s sailing (particularly fully compliant F16’s) has been a little slow in becoming apparent, that is definitely changing and the momentum is now growing and will be obvious to all sailers in the very near future. One of the main reasons (as I see it) that the advent of F16 numbers on the water has been slow to gather momentum is that virtually all of the sailers coming into F16 are experienced sailer who are coming from owning other cats and very few people who are already sailing within a class will just drop their allegiance to that class and hop into an entirely different class without thinking about it for some time. That time delay is now starting to happen and the transition seems to be well under way.
(although it's still nice to occasionally kick an F16's butt with an Alpha F14!!)