Dear fellow class enthousiasts,

The rules ballot has been completed and validated and at the last moment a misunderstanding was put right. Therefor the time has come to present the outcome of the Formula 16 class rules ballot.

35 voters distributed over 3 continents : Australia, USA and the EU have voted. One voter abstained and will not be counted.

The outcome is :

88,2 % of the voters is in favour of the new Formula 16 rule set ! (= 30 votes)

11,8 % of the voters prefered the now old rule set


By any standard (51 % , 2/3rd and even over 75 %) this ballot has proven the new Formula 16 rule set to be favoured with plenty of room to spare.

This number of 35 voters is mirrored in about 35 boats making the number of people involved even larger than just 35 persons. One vote per boat was allowed.

This is a convincing acceptance of the Formula 16 rule set and it is the direct result of the efforts of a few class officials. Especially the Australian Class representative Phill Brander has layed the foundations on which many compromises were reached and clearly to the satisfaction of almost all. His efforts are much appreciated and the class wants to publically thanks him in this manner.

Furthermore the class want the thank the three builders involved for their openness and willingness to discuss any elements in the rules at length. Also for their willingness to cooperate with eachother and see the issue from the perspective of "the other side". Such an attitude by Stealthmarine, AHPC and Blade was instrumental in achieving this result. It was also instrumental in working up a good phone bill of a few hunderd dollars, but that was the price to pay.

And lastly the class wishes to thank the class enthousiast that have waiting quite a few weeks for this evaluation proces to be finalized. Clearly from time to time it must have seem like an endless wait when behind the scene there were intense discussions. Thank you for your patience and your private e-mails giving us, the class officials, your opinions and suggestions. Actually quite a few of those made into the new rules; and all sizes great and small.

Like my class collegue said and he spoke for all the builders and class officials when he said that "... we have a very good set of rules now and these will enable us to grow to a world wide class in just a few years"

A sign of this potential is the growth of the fleet in South East asia (Signapore and Thailand). We were doing Amerika, Australia and Europe but over the last 18 months the Asian continent quickly formed a fleet which is to be taken seriously.

There is even more good news, the Formula 16 class is very hopefull that the communication send to the Bimare yard will settle the dispute relating to the Javelin 16 design. But more importantly the SCHRS (ISAF) handicap systeem has just accepted our proposal to eliminate the final hurdle and has awarded the Formula 16 class an official handicap ratings based on our class rules. Go to www.schrs.com and see for yourself. The rating ofcourse one for the solo setup and one for the doublehander setup. The doublehander rating is equal to the Formula 18 class. And our good relations with the Texel committee has resulted in the very swift adjustement of our texel ratings now that the new rules have been accepted.

With kind regards,

Formula 16 class




Representative of the Formula 16 High Performance Class Organisation.