G'day Ross,

I concur with your sentiments however I'm not sure the F12 "knows" what it is yet; kids trainer, kids racer, teen racer, adult racer/cruiser. What we do know is that there is a fair bit of interest in the class from a lot of different ppl.

For now, it is open to every one of the above groups and my opinion is that whoever likes it the most will eventually steer it towards the F12 concept, it will evolve. Over time, material issues will be resolved, but I don't believe there should be too many restrictions here; for such a small boat, material costs are far outweighed by labour.

We've also seen, over a long period of time now, that apparently conservative restrictions in materials and suppliers do little to lower the costs to the boater; eg. AUD$1100 for a laser sail is ridiculous. I would like to see competition amongst suppliers leading to lower minimum costs.

My personal vision of the F12 is as a kids trainer & racer; no adults, 2 age divisions, 1-up and 2-up depending on division. I also see a benefit to a one design, but not SMOD, rig and sail plan similar to the very successful IOM class. For a home build, the rig will be a very significant cost and complexity and one designing it will help. Not sure about one design beams yet, but from a practical point of view only, they would also be a benefit. To tell you the truth though, a set of home-built carbon beams would cost very little if done correctly. And consider longevity issues of aluminium parts vs carbon. The evidence just isn't there to argue against carbon for some parts when considering long term costs; eg. there are 10 year old carbon masts winning races in the 12' skiff class.

There is also the issue of complexity of the rules, which has been discussed previously, and I don't think it is time for the F12 to develop a set of rules as complex as say the optimist just yet. Again it is a part of the evolution of the class.