My definition of a kid is under 16, so we have an overlap in our opinions there. Under 12's I would suggest sail the F12 2-up, it is too big a rig for a 40kg skipper on their own.
Okay. So basically we have to decide what portion of the 16 year olds we still want to include in the F12's.
Here some demographic specs taken from the US center for Health statistics. US populace should be somewhere around the middle of the world. In general not very tall (like scandinavia) or vry short (like asia). This to provide some more scientific data to the discussion.
Boys 16 years
5% at or below 47.5 kg
50% at or below 62.5 kg
75% at or below 70.0 kg
90% at or below 77.5 kg
95% at or below 84.0 kg
Girls 16 years of age
5% at or below 42.5 kg
50% at or below 55.0 kg
75% at or below 62.5 kg
90% at or below 70.0 kg
95% at or below 77.5 kg
I restate (form earlier posts) that
Boys AND girls 12 years
5% at or below 30.0 kg
50% at or below 40.0 kg
75% at or below 47.5 kg
95% at or below 60.0 kg
So basically we have to decide what portion of the 16 year olds we still want to include in the F12's.
A few examples
If we want 82% of the 16 years olds to be in the competitive range then the F12 weight carrying ability needs to go up to at least 70 kg
If we want 63% (under 2/3rds) of the 16 years olds to be competitive then the F12 weight carrying ability needs to go up to at least 62.5 kg
If we want 50% of the doublehanded 12 year olds to be competitive (with careful combining of different crew weights) then the F12 carrying ability needs to go up to at least 80 kg. That while we "force" thje top 20% of this group to sail solo (they are above 50 kg and just entering the bottom weight range of the F12 when singlehanding)
Designing the F12 COMPETITIVE weight carrying ability up to 75 kg would allow us to include 94% of all 16 year olds but also 90% of of adult women and 67% of adult males (20 years).
If we copy the competitive range of the optimists, see link provide by Ncik, which is about 40-50 kg then less then boys=max10% + girls=max25% of the 16 year olds will be competitive. Resulting in just under 20% of this combined group being competitive. All others will have outgrown the 50 kg upper limit.
I have attached the demographics graphs for both boys and girls from 2-to-20 years of age. Women havse stopped growing by 20, while male may add some weight (but not length) up to 23 years of age. I propose using this data to fine tune the F12's.
Wouter
