Personally I see very little value in going one design and here is my logic:

A few years ago a good friend of mine who was then quite high up in Macdonald's Marketing and I had a conversation about Mc-cafe (which I assume is in the US and Europe too) and what a success it had become. The interesting thing was the background behind its introduction. The logic is that in most groups of people there is one person who "doesn't eat fast food" as a result if they are a particularly vocal member of that group (or the parent in a family group) they can stop the whole group eating at Macdonalds. This person was known as the gateway customer as they were acting as a gate stopping other potential customers coming into the store.

The idea of Mc Cafe was that it would remove this customer's excuse thereby letting the other customers in. The Mc Cafes were originally intended to operate at a loss, as the loss would be more than offset by the added turnover over the main counter. The truth is they were so successful that they actually make money in their own right.

Ok, back to boats.

First of what is our goal: To get kids sailing cats rather than monos.

Double bottem line of the class therefor needs to be:

1. Design of boat should be attractive to kids both in terms of styling and performance.

2. Design of boat should be attractive to parents (harder to please) from a cost, styling, performance and safety point of view.

(in both of these I include rigging time in performance)

Why is my Mac's story relevent...

If there is one element of a boat that doesn't appeal to either the parent or the child, either one of them could become the gateway customer and say this boat is not for us and move on to the next class. By providing a range of choices (4 at last count) hopefully one of the designs will slip through and get the kid into the class.

From a market research point of view it is interesting that the designs that have grabbed people's attention enough for them to say lets start building have boards and when specifically asked that is the solution they want.

You will see local one design classes develop (as you do with f18 and other formula classes) due to conditions, what was their first etc, however at this stage trying to get a one size fits all boat will actually minimise (or slow down)its acceptance. In ten years if there are 100 boats turning up to a worlds and chequebook racing is becoming an issue then lets let the people running the class then handle it.

I'm happy to see the formula rules tighened (luff length, mast height etc) but as stated previously I could not in good conscience vote or agree to limit choices on rigging boards/skegs etc. For example I see a great case for a two child trainer with a reduced main sail area and a jib.

And just to clarify, I see this boat as a kids boat for under 12s.

My basic sailing history is.

Age 6. Crewed (sailed with) my dad on an Hobie 14 turbo (pulling on jib and trapesing in light conditions) at regionial regattas.

Age 9. Sailing lessons (club wouldn't let us do them any younger).

Age 10-11 single handed dad's hobie 14 between and after races at regattas (too big by then to crew with him).

Age 12 Competed in (as crew) and finished in top half of fleet (about 40 boats) Hobie 18 Nationals

Age 14 Still sailing Hobie 18s, single handing TheMightyHobie18 from trap with main and jib.

Adult hood, aside from keelboats and a period of sharpie sailing with the uni I've only ever raced or wanted to race cats. I'm the product we are after and it was started by getting me racing cats at 6 years of age.