Hi gents,
I much appreciate your comments and feedback. It's interesting to see how this class in developing and how much interest it is receiving from around the world.
To your point ncik, I agree, it appears unclear what this class is yet. There is clearly a HUGE amount of cat sailing, design and building experience involved in the development of the class, and seems to me that there may be some positive benefits in having this collective experience draw up some design and construction guidelines that steer the class in a specific direction. Ncik, I tend to agree with your vision for the class, not totally restricting design, but restricting some elements that may/may not give some designs significant advantage.
Not for a moment am I suggesting the banning of carbon. It's strength and life span over aluminium are well documented, however to your point Gato, it seems to me that you may want to prevent a platform/rig design coming along that is significantly better than the others. This in effect would render existing boats all but redundant and people would have wasted their $1500 plus, and all the hours invested. A question for those out there...... how many 5 plus year old A class cats are competitive these days? There has been quite a bit of talk about the Arafura Cadet on this thread. I had one and loved it as a kid. But I imagine there would be none of these around today to even talk about if they had been part of a development class that rendered this 30 plus year old design redundant a few years after building. I remember when the AC went from solid bridge deck to aluminium beams and tramp. Even that was enough to cause debate in an already great class.
So the seed of thought is growing in my mind, if the Formula class does mean unrestricted development, is this the right platform from which to be developing an entry level training boat? Once again food for thought.
Regardless, I and my l
kids will still be looking to get involved in this developing class when the time is right.
All power to you guys.
Ross
