My first question is about the class itself. Is the F16HP Class international, or U.S.? If this is a U.S. Class, then why are we having to comply to ideas of another continent that has different wind and sea conditions? Not knocking anything, but just wondering.
Sorry for the digressive questions.
Back to the Hooter debate. So far I cannot see that an answer has come forth on why Europeans do not consider a Hooter a headsail. I know in the U.S. they certainly are. At one time the typical spinnaker had a bigger hit than the Hooter because is had more sail area, was fuller and was supposed to be faster.
Then after myself and a few others with Hooters started winning races, it soon became rated the same as a spinnaker.
How it could be considered a jib of any kind I am not sure. But if it is considered a jib in the eyes of the F16HP Class, then there should be no reason that a single person could not simply sail a Taipan 4.9 with main and jib (only the jib would be a Hooter). Should there?
The thing that has bothered me about the banning of the Hooter (and, in essence, it is a ban if the unfair hit is so heavy that it cannot compete -- sounds like someone is scared as hell of such a sail design) is how they can do so when the sail is smaller and even has a concave leech often.
At this point the F16 is set up to be fair racing, but I cannot see how using a Hooter (smaller and easier to use) would make things unfair.
And cost-wise, there is no comparison So, let's look at the advantages.

• The Hooter itself is less expensive that a standard spinnaker because there is less material and can be cheaper material
• the Hooter is more durable -- it can be made of heavier material and is alway rolled up neatly, not stuff and crinkled in a bag
• Roller furling equipment is very inexpensive in comparison to Snuffer equipment, the pricing of which begins at around a couple thousand dollars, instead of a couple hundred dollars.
• Furling is much, much faster to launch and retrieve (witness the difficulty of both the F18HT and F16HP performances in the recent championships).
• The whole idea behind the Hooter was too allow more boats to fly headsails (spinnakers) and to be able to include more women and youth in the sport (remember the furler is so much easier to use than standard spinnaker set, jibes and drops -- I am still feeling sorry for poor Mavis Harnden in the heavy air at the F16 Nationals.., it was all she could to get the sail out. In fact usually she had to take the helm and Chuck had to get the sail out)
• Windage of the furler has been under criticism, but doesn't a snuffer bag hanging out between the hulls also add a lot of windage. And tightly-rolled furled sail probably has less windage than the whole sail inside a bag hanging openly a foot or two over the water.
• The Hooter allows the deck to be very clean since there is only one line that is used to handle not only the deployment of the sail, but it also is used to retrieve. The Spinnaker requires a tack and head halyard and then a retrieval line.
• More on a clean deck -- you can set the retrieval system up so that the excess sheet wraps around the furled sail and takes all of that excess sheet off the deck.., and the sheet that is rolled around the furled sail insures that it will not start unfurling and causing drag.
  

Wouter says that the Hooter puts more load on the platform.., and this is true if you are using it upwind, but the loads are the same off the wind. The cost of adding a dolphin-striker to the the bow sprit handles the load on the platform, however. That cost is far less than the huge investment in snuffer equipment and all the spider-web line required to run it.

In reply to the post: And to finish up this post, can anybody please point me to independently gethered results (no anonymous "I witnessed" claims please) where the hooter has proven to be faster than a gennaker. I would appreciate that very much.
Can anyone do the same for the spinnaker? I doubt it.
On the other hand, I have been on the boat that has many times cleaned up on standard spinnakers.
The first time when we knew we had something going here was during the Bay to Ocean Race in Marthon Florida a few years ago.
I was defending my title of the perpetual for the event that year and when we arrived we found very light air that was a close reach up one side of the island, and then the course went through a bridge and came back down the ocean side of the island. I happened to have an old reacher that Randy Smyth had made for me to use on the Nacra 5.5 Uni. So, I decided to use that instead of the spinnaker. My thinking was that I might have large enough lead with the reacher that I could hold off the big spins down the ocean side. Also the wind was forecasted to clock to the right -- that would make the ocean side a beam reach.

Well, we never made the ocean side. About 2/3 of the way to the bridge, the RC saw that we were not going to make it in time (the wind was dying even more) Most of us were hugging the right side of the course thinking the new wind would come from the right side. All of us except Robert Ongsgard and an F-31.
The RC dropped a turning mark right in front of Onsgard and the F-31 (not very fair to the rest of the fleet, by the way). They rounded and headed for the finish line some 20 miles behind us.
The rest of the fleet had to sail upwind to get to the new mark. I was third around the mark and a good nine minutes behind Onsgard sporting a huge spinnaker. Right behind me was Clive Mayo who also was flying a large spinnaker.
I warned my crew, "We are going to be rolled by Clive any minute now with that big spin." But, lo and behold, I heard nothing coming up behind me. I looked back to see that we were tracking better and walking away.
We soon passed the F-31 (huge spinnaker) and reeled in Onsgard. We finished 20 minutes ahead of Onsgard.
And that was when I became a believer.

Well, this is my essay for the day. Sorry it was so long.
Rick