Ball-style harness:
"too many people wrote into this forum and said they just dropped off the side of the boat"
Those stories resulted from using the plastic spreader plate made by Hobie.
There are no breakage issues with the aluminium or carbon/Kevlar spreader plates.

The only disadvantage is that the trapeze wire ball does not disengage from the harness by itself, you have to push it. Some skiff sailors claim this slows their tacks by some milliseconds.

Stein