Never the less, at that regatta a great deal of anger was voiced at the notion of sailing 2-up one day and 1-up the following day.
I think this is more like mouthing off by sailors irritated over other things. This was never a notion that was supported by the F16 class. Neither has it been common practice in the F16 class to switch make-up from one day to another. This is actually quite rare and it never happened in any big event (other then a fun race) as far as I can tell. I wonder what these sailors are so angry about.
The F16 class rules do not disallow changing the setup explicetly because it was also envisioned that we could have an F16 event where the 2-up and 1-up modes were both part of the racing. Like a swim contest where you have a relay race covering the backstroke, freestroke and those other 2 methodes of waterborne propulsion. Sort of like do 4 races as 2-up crew and then each crew member does 2 races in 1-up mode, resulting is a 8 race team result.
In effect the switching is left to be regulated by the Sailing Instructions.
In all instances we switched setup in a non-F16 fun event I seem to recall that that crew was scored as two seperate crews with DNS scored for the races where is was in a different attire. Basically this meant the crew was out of contention for any of the top places. Personally I couldn't care less if my overall result is DSQ'ed if ever I switch horse mid stream. I race for enjoyment not because I expect to win a pot of gold by getting 1st overall.
The F16 class was never envisioned to cheat the game by having the crew make-up follow the conditions of the day. Although I do agree with Timbo that in small fun oriented events I wouldn't care what a crew does as long as it puts one more boat on the line.
Interestingly enough, we still haven't found out which setup is the quicker of the two given a set of weather conditions and a skilled crew/skipper.
I think these F18 guys are making a whole lot of fuss about something that really isn't an issue and never will be an issue. The F16 class stimulates the boat being used for both 1-up and 2-up racing using the same hardware; it does not stimulate doing so inside the format of an single event or to do so depending on the weather conditions.
They can not object to the first and the latter happens too seldomly (and only in fun events) to warrant any "anger"
Wouter
