Good point Matt, but the sail number has never been a very good indication of a boats age, so I'm not sure that is a problem. Why would someone go to the trouble of getting a new boat and not bother measuring it anyway? Unless it doesn't measure of course!!

A bigger problem is how someone gets a new boat measured so they can get a sail number when the sails are part of the measurement process. It means a sail must be ordered without numbers and the numbers added later, or the certificate and sail numbers are issued without the sails being measured.

That raises the question of why sails are in the measurement form at all. Most people own more than one sail so it doesn't mean much to have only one of them measured. What really matters is the measurer's signature on the sail itself. Maybe the sails should be removed from the measurement form. That makes more sense to me and solves all the problems.