John (and all)-
A little history on the F16 PN might be useful to understanding the current situation, and since I got the F16 ball rolling here I guess I get to tell the story. Once upon a time, here in the US, about 9 years ago, I got a small 16 foot boat from a galaxy far, far below ours (Australia) after racing against Auscat A's and ground crewing for Team Taipan in the last "open boat" Worrell 1000 race. That little boat, Taipan 4.9 #159, which I wanted to race here, needed a US PN number. When a new boat is imported/built one has to apply to the USSA for a provisionary PN and I did so through Darline Hobock- a wonderfully patient USSA volunteer. The assignment of these provisional PN's is necessarily somewhat arbitrary- apparently if requested by a manufacturer for instance it was my understanding they just told the PN committee what they thought was a good number and unless it seemed way off base that was what was assigned. For the Taipan, which at that time was just beginning to sneak out of Aus, I really had no idea of it's potential but luckily they were quite widely sailed in Aus by the likes of Greg Goodall, Glen Ashby, etc. and Aus had a handicap system in place with a number for the Taipan 4.9 uni and sloop (which were NOT identical BTW). Remember, this was before Phill, Wouter and I dreamed up the F16 so there was no spinnaker involved at that time. Using the Tornado as a standard reference between the Aus VYC and US DPN Darline calculated the original provisional number for the Taipan 4.9 uni and sloop (which were different since the VYC numbers were different). The Taipan numbers grew very slowly in the US until a few of us "nuts" started insisting on putting spinnakers on the boats and came up with the F16HP rules. My first spinnaker Greg sold me for my Taipan was a very full 21 sqm!! Greg wanted to go with that size since the Texel rule gave the same "hit" for a spi up to that size! In the U.S. the spi modification number was simply added to the Taipan 4.9 uni and sloop number. We were using tramp spi bags back in those days too and starting to experiment with snuffers (I still have my first beautiful Guck CF snuffer from the days when it was the "secret weapon" in the Tornado class!). In those days the only US F16's were Taipan 4.9's and a single BIM 16. It's important to realize those boats are only 4.9m long, only slightly wider than an A cat, had a mainsail with a very small "square" head and "old" style spis. These are the boats that originally "developed" the current PN - and it kept dropping every year for quite a few years for both the "regular" Taipans and the F16's. The current Blades/Stealths/Vipers etc. are all built "to the rule" and so are longer, wider, taller (able to handle more power) with bigger head mainsails, self-tacker jibs, snuffers, higher aspect boards, better spinnakers, etc. The current F16's have simply evolved faster than the PN has been able to adapt. I can tell you just the difference in mainsails from the current crop in the A class to what I got as the "hot" sail 7 years was immediately noticeable on my 2001 Flyer. Can only imagine what a new "big head" main will do for my Taipan!
Hope this was helpful
