That is like two disagreeing generals saying to eachother, on the eve of a major battle, that each will do their own thing and let the end result determine who was right.

The typical end result of that analogy is of course that they will both loose and they will both have been wrong.

When you are not cooperating with eachother then you'll be much weaker then when you are.

Needless to say that after the battle there won't be enough survivors on the loosing side to regain the former combined strength.





The Hobie Wave has failed in area's outside of the USA. F12 still got a good shot at really becoming an international class.




That is wishful thinking in my opinion. The kids don't hold sufficiently large wallets or drivers license and I don't see any reason why we could expect major sales coming down the road with the way things are going now. That offer by a US producer has died for lack of interest and I don't think the rotomolded Vudu has met its threshold of committed sales yet. Even the concept of kit-building hasn't lifted off yet; although this is just another way of homebuilding anyway.

Lets not forget guys that we are already a few years down the road and Gato is the only at this time who is actually sailing an F12. And he is thinking about making a 14 footer for himself next.

Lots of potential ? Yeah, probably, but not much of that has been realized yet. At some time we have to put some rubber on the road and that means attracting COMMERCIAL BUILDERS. That is not happening yet.Lots of promises but no real breakthrough yet. We are going the way of the F14's rather then the F18's and F16's (who both had more then one commerical builder with boats sold within the year).




That is a mighty big gamble for most parents, if you ask me.

I will personally test the waters first on some second hand Optis or Laser 4.7's if it comes to that. And that is just what we wanted to prevent with the F12.




Yeah, well "a bit" is just not enough.

When I'm a dollar short it won't help much if you thrown me a dime.




This is the same "two generals" theme but with different wording.

I 'm not going to invest resources on a "maybe", that is if I would have them at this time (note I already did a thing like that with the F16's; the money runs out sometime).

This is a thing we have to do all together or we can just forget about it.

But what I don't understand really is why you would the following in a single post.





Either there is potential for it (light to medium adults) or there isn't.

The real issue is whether we ALL TOGETHER build and promote the F12 class as a versatile concept or completely gamble everything on the youths.

I'm out if it is the last and thus leaving only the downunder guys and Gato still in the mix. The Taipan was killed internationally by the same playbook.

With the current downturn in economy I choose versatility overf specialization any day. I think Darwin agrees with me here. Or in sailor terms; there is a reason why we see seagulls everywhere around the globe but not many kolibri's. It may not be the prettiest bird but it sure as hell is succesful.

Or if you will, that Marstom M18 (A-cat+spi) at 80 kg was a bloody nice concept, but marketing wise it failed disasterously when compared to the F16's. That is what I'm getting it. We took the 25 kg hit but gained a pathway to attracting commercial builders and to success. And lets not get started on the 180 kg F18's vs 120 kg M20's as an example to illustrate the same point.

Wouter