The answer to your question is that there is nothing in the Acat rules to stop you from asymmetric dagger boards or gybing dagger boards. Foils that lift the boat clear of the water are not allowed.

If you have asymmetric dagger boards, you'll have to gybe/adjust them on each tack, unless you design something that does this automatically, which would be neat trick, seeing that you want them to gybe if opposite directions upwind vs down. Lets just pretend that on either upwind or down or both you'll have to do this manually.

With one person on an Acat its going to add time to your tack to gybe your boards, and I think that you'll find that its slower in the tack to gybe your boards, vs any advantage you gain using them (symmetric or not)

The really fast guys - Lars Guck for example, complete their tack and are off on a new tack so fast it looks like a big splash in the water. He walked a group of us through his tack at a pre-regatta session and he's thought through the tack, and he does it the same each time, each step is optimized and he doesnt waste any motion in getting to a new tack.

I would work on getting things more simplified as opposed to more complicated, so your tacks are that much faster.

A cat sailing is easily 60% skipper skill, 40% boat/sails, etc. Thats the reason Ben Hall didnt walk away with the worlds title, he ended up right about the same as he usually does at the worlds, even with a solid wing that is theoretically much faster than a soft sail.


Bill