Well, actually, such a view can be succesfully defended.

Indeed the F16 setup is heavily inspired by the F18 class; especially the succes they achieved with the Formula setup of their class rules.

For a very long time we even explicetly said so on our official webpages.

Although we all remember the ridicule and disbelieve we reaped when we started out in 2001 with F16 and claimed it to be comparable in performance to the F18's. Many believed that our lightweight and short hulls were a receipy for disaster, both physically and economically. The fact that we claimed that this setup would be equally well suited for competitive 1-up and 2-up sailing (even against one another) was also frowned upon.

Additionally, it is a different kind of skill to build a 107 kg ready to race 2-up spinnaker boat then a 180 kg ready to race 2-up spinnaker boat. So in the first years we had to some researching and build optimalisation ourselves to get down to the specs we desired. Experiences taken from the A-cat class was very helpful here. Interestingly enough, we also recognized the superiority of item like the (true) wingmast before the F18 class did.

So I think we can rightfully claim to have done alot of pioneering work with the F16 class. We had to do alot of proving against commonly encoutered disbelieves. And surprisingly enough we got the concept and specs right almost entirely from the first moment. I think we only entlarged the mainsail form 14.85 to 15.00 sq.mtr and the jib from 3.45 to 3.70 sq. mtr. ; all the other specs have remained unaltered. Some class rules were replace by improved and simplified wording without affecting the specs and that was it.

Also our class rules have rather diverged from the F18 setup rather then converged. We actively fight the pressure to included more and more class rules and to pre-ampt any freedom by stating that everything that is not specifically allowed is disallowed as the F18 has done by opting to register themselves as a "closed ruleset" with ISAF. Of course we have a mix of carbon masts and alu masts, we do allow exotic fibres any part where you may want to use these. In this respect we are actually ahead of the F18 class. Although we still make lots of use of (sail and laminate) optimization that is achieved in the F18 and A-cat classes.

So I think that we can be defined as a class that was heavily inspired by the F18 class but have since then (and from very early on) blasted our own trail and have grown beyond the example set by the F18 class and have broken new ground.

So if indeed we started out as a copy-cat, we have long left this category.

Wouter