Stephen,

You are using a strawman type of argument now.

Nobody is saying that things like weight aloft aren't important, just that the differences in such matters between a current new F16's and a mythical exotic F16 for 2 times the investment is too small to justify that extra money in the way of performance gains.

To give you an example. The Taipan 4.9 platforms as delivered by AHPC flexed 68 mm in the "walking over waves" manner measured by the Phill Brander method. The prototype Blade (timber 80x2 alu beams)flexed 43 mm. The new Stealths and Euro Blade F16 flex below 25 mm with the lowest that was measured now being at 15 mm. The F18's (Hobie, Tiger) that were measured by the same method and came in a 90-95 mm and this number is still more then the range of new F16's when it is devided by 2 in order to equalize the weights of both platforms in the test. The A-cats (un equalized for weight !) with glued in carbon beams are about 10-15 mm. When corrected the are about 25 mm. Therefor F16's are already pretty maxed out in this sense. Alot of development has already been done over the last 6 years. Now I'm sure that the Capricorn F18 flexes very little but indeed it does appear that the range over flexing in the F18 class is still very wide, maybe 90-95 for the standard Hobie and Nacra products and 50 mm for the Cap ? 40-45 mm difference in flexing is alot in comparison, the range between F16's is only halve that.

Also how much more performance gain can be had by reducing an already very low flexing of an F16 platform ? This is very much a case of diminishing returns. Yes the drop from 68 mm (Taipan 4.9) to say 40 mm (first series of Blades) is significant but the drop from 40 to 15 much less so.

I sometimes feel that people look to much to the internet to learn about the F16 class and assume that all that is found there is all that there is too the F16 class. This way they overlook the fact that some very knowlegdeable people are working on the background. People with over 25 years experience in building, repairing and selling (commercial) catamarans like the A-cats. Alot of their knowlegde goes into the newer F16's. I'm not one of those people and indeed my set of tasks were of a different kind.

The general assumption made by some that the F16's are far from optimized is simply wrong. The facts of the situation do not support such a believe.

I gave here on example but for pretty much each area we can hold the same argument.

Wouter