Till not too long ago it was perfectly obvious who was leading the F16 class and ever since I made room for somebody else I've been a little dismayed at how invisible our official presence has become.

So indeed Mark you are completely right in this respect.



With respect to




I have a completely different take on things and have had so for years.

I think we should all put ourselfs in great soup (handicap racing) and share as much events as we can. Look for boats that are up to date and able to catch the imagination of new blood and advice every potential buyer of the advantages and drawbacks.

Actually, I WANT to be beaten by say a Hobie 16 sailor in an open handicap race. Makes me try harder next time to stay ahead and it will give that H16 crew a major two thumbs up to have beated an F16 ! Larger fleets are more fun, 6 boat fleets are just BS. During my tenure we have actively invited other classes and designs to share a race course/event with us. In some cases we actually did, I refer to the annual A-cat/F16 invitational in Gulfport and the combined F16/FX-one event in the UK. I can only say that these events have been beneficial for us and I don't see the A-cats impacted negatively by sharing an event with us.

And I've found that honesty last the longest so lying about your class gets you nowhere in the long run.

On top of this we should organise ourself under one umbrella organisation and work together to get as large a foot print as we can in relation to our numbers.

In my opinion, everything Hobie corp does is in direct opposite to what is needed and described above. Anybody else wonder why the FX-one is being upstaged the world over by a bunch of amateurs on F16's ?

Alot of times the truth is somewhere in the middle, in a few cases it is not.

Wouter