Michael,
I would like to underline that BIMARE started to produce the BIM 16, in 1990, (some 12 years ago), well before the constitution of the F16HP. In this time some 250 boats have been built and sold mainly in Italy, but also in France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland etc. I know that more than 300 Taipans 4.9 are around, but what about the figure of the newcomers such as Stealthmarine and the other boatyards?
As you can understand in these twelve years a lot of work has been performed and many modifications tested in order to improve the original design, keeping firm only the UNIRIG configuration. As I already wrote, Mr Petrucci, BIMARE owner, believes, rightly or wrongly, that a jib adds only weight, stress, strain and cost to a good platform. The BIM 16 actually started with a 8.25 m mast; then a 8.50 stick was adopted, but the boat was considered still underpowered and consequently they went lately for a 8.75 m to arrive recently, in 1999, to the actual 9.0 m. The same about the boat width.
You complaint about BIMARE's choice not to build a new 16 footer cat fitting the MODIFIED F16HP rule you are going to adopt, but consider that doing so BIMARE would waste 12 years of work (they should have to learn to build sloop rigged boat from scratch).