Stretch
Yep we've all got prebent poles to. We use Dyneema rope so no stretch there. But if you sail in decent breeze you'll have a fair bit of compression on the mast i.e. the side stay will go loose by a bit and that allows more slack in things. Even though we sail with almost 0 downhaul downhill, everything gives a little.

Having people do things in slightly different ways, makes racing interesting!

Weight
All up... good to go. You take away the F18 boards/rudders they had originally and that saves bulk! After the pre-production models, the builder got a lot more practice and the weights stabilised.

Pulling up the beach
Taipan is easy because it feels tiny after the Viper!