A clear statement from a well known catamaran builder like AHPC would have promote F16 in france.
Very few people know Stealth, Vectorworks or catamaranparts in france. The known builders are known because they have build competitive F18, and AHPC is one of them. Now with this statement, all the known manufacturer in france have theirs F104 (nacra,hobie cat,AHPC now, BCM (cirrus))...
And the fact that AHPC promote their F16 like a F104 in france give you a clue about the importance of the french market. F104 will not grow outside france, but france has one of the most active catamaran community so that it is not nothing for the F16 to not penetrate that community (I'm not shure I'm clear here <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />).
That's too bad because I thought the viper would have been able to drag some attention to the F16 class...

Bah, no big deal, a beautiful blond single handed on a blade at the next eurocat could do the job <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />.

Ciao,
Thomas.