To be really honest, I don't know what I will do in your very specifically defined problem.

In http://www.catsailor.com/forums/sho...Number=118065&page=&vc=1 I had given two situations were I would do one or the other, albeit without a spinnaker added. Your problem resides between these two examples and as such the choice will be less clear. Naturally, a crossover point will be found somewhere between these two examples. At at this point it doesn't matter what you choose as both setups will be perfectly matched in performance. It appears to me that your proposed problem is very close to this crossover point. Without exactly knowing where this crossover point is found but still forcing me to be close to it my answer can only be increasingly a guess.

Mostly because I now have to know (estimate) very accurately were this this crossover point lays. I think I have a pretty good idea of where the crossover region lays = set of crossover points (depending on conditions) with a decent margin of uncertainty on either side of it. But when you (needlessly) force me to go into this region then I'm lost for an conclusive answer. In all the other examples, we were sufficiently far away from this region to be certain about what is the favoured setup. Now I'm not.

But this is getting very academic, because the choice on a F16 platform is not confined to having a 15 sq. mtr. uni rig or a 15 sq. mtr. sloop rig. The 3rd option is of course to go with the 18.7 sq. mtr. sloop rig. All of these can be had without changing a single thing on the basic F16 design. So when given the FULL choice of possibilities I would always go for this 3rd option.

I'm really adament that excluding this third option altogether from the choice is one of the tricks used to mislead sailors into believing that the uni-rig design is superior in performance.

Wouter