PS... Why do you understand Hobie's reluctance to jump into the F16 class? Overlap with the F18's racing demographic. cost differential for building a lightweight boat? Lack of control over the rules limit's profitability long term? Resistance from Hobie 16 OD class?
Mark,
Indeed (in no particular order)
-1- Feared overlap with the F18 demographic
-2- Lack of control over the F16 class by Hobie Corp
-3- Losing face to bunch of upstarts
-4- A deeply embedded SMOD culture
-5- Dogmatic fear of ongoing development
Most of these points are unavoidable anyway. What is the difference costwise in gradually improving the design annually and coming out with a completely new SMOD design every 5 to 10 years anyway ? Fact of the current situation is that cat designs MUST move with the times or accept falling behind with respect to the totally dominant formula scene. Even established OD classes like the Nacra 20's or Tornado's can't/couldn't get away from that.
Additionally what is the difference in cost between building a lightweight F16 and an equally lightweight but totally new icat ? Indeed, any Hobie F16 could have been developped cheaper because of many "off-the-shelve" items the F16 class could deliver to them whose development costs are already spread over a much larger builder base. They can just buy the Superwing Alu mast at cost price by invoking the F16 class deal we have with Goodall on this item. Goodall himself could deliver a fully tested and optimized rig to go with this mast starting next week. A similar deal exists with respect to the Stealth Carbon masts. Lightweight foils ? A thing Hobie corp has never tried in their history could be bought of various builders for less money per set then they can implement a production line for. Tapping directly into decades of A-cat building experience. To give a feel for the challenge they are facing. They have to build 1.5 kg foils with the loading comparable to an FX-one that itself has foils weighting in at a whopping 4 kg's a piece ! In fact the F16 class structure and network being builders and suppliers could have provided Hobie with a rather small investment path to getting the first boats to the market in a competitive sense. If these would catch on then they could have increasingly movied production in-house and optimized their profit margins. Stuff like that.
The feared overlap with the F18 demographic is becoming increasingly a none starter with the improvements made to the icat.
SMOD is a dead concept for new classes. It survives only because of impressive past achievements of old classes (Hobie 16 and Dart 18). All the rest has died. I fear Hobie internal culture is only very slowly adapting to this reality.
Wouter
