Hey Matt, maybe you're having a bad day with cut-and-paste, but that was not a quote from me. I intentionally omitted names from my disertation on my understanding of the subject. <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Wouter, I disagree that "most racers were gravitating towards spinnaker cats" at least in the US. Yes, there are more than there were 10 years ago, but the far and wide majority of racing cats in the US are still uni or sloop rigs. I do agree that the offset came about because of spinnaker boats, but that is a completely different issue.

I recall this issue of removing reaches from championships as originating from the Olympic level, many years before the Tornado had a spinnaker.

At most of the cat events that I run, we either have too few mark boats to run a reach (at the "fun" races), or fleets of sailors who don't want them because they prefer to use points regattas to train for major events, where they never see reach marks anymore (for the strategic reasons in my prior message).

Mike