My counter example was not a reply to your post Wayne.

The reason I don't see much common ground between the A's and the F16's is because the key ratio's and specs are to far apart to extrapolate results achieved in the A-cats to F16's.

I'm not going to cover all, there are more then enough posts of mine over the years that has discussed each and any of them. I'm not going to repeat those.

But basically the F16's are short and wide platforms with 20% more sail drive upwind and well over a 100% more saildrive when going downwind when in 1-up mode. The F16 solo sailor lacks a pair of hands and there is no such thing on the F16's as an angle of attack on the mainsail beyond 30 degrees (reaching).

The A-cats are long and narrow platforms with very lightweight masts/rigs. They are sailed by a skipper with a dedicated hand for the sheet and a dedicated hand for the tiller and the rig may experience angle of attacks as wide as 50 degrees (downwind).

These difference can easily lead to a score of differences. A Trivial one is the boom height. A F16 sailor really does not want a low boom when gybing under a spinnaker with the main cleated off.

A more complex difference is in the required dive recovery. The F16's have (even) on the upwind 20% more pitching moment then the A's and have 10% shorter hulls that need to withstand that and also have to carry 20% more weight. These three factors combine to require much more volume in the F16 hull over a shorter hull distance. This means that the bow angle is SIGNIFICANTLY greater (+35%) then on the A's; this is an important performance ratio as it determines the relative magnitudes between wetted surface drag and form drag (waves). I will stop here, but it must not come as a surprise that a 35% difference in bow angle makes the two designs alot less comparable then say a F16 to a F18 who both share an almost identical bow angle (100%).

This is actually one of the reasons why I predicted back in 2001 that the F16's would be just as fast as the F18's. Back then hardly anybody took me seriously. However, I knew that all the key ratio's such as the bow angle and prismatic ratio of the hull, aspect ratio's of the sails and others like the coefficient between heeling and righting moments were all identical to those of the F18's. Of course when each was sailed by their target crews. With such a strong similarity on all those factors, the two design could hardly not be of the same overall speed.

Now, all these factors do NOT match up nicely between the F16's and A's. Ergo, making an F16 more like a A-cat will most likely (well almost certainly really) not transfer the vast bulk of benefits. And without these you end up with an inferior design.

The rest I leave up to your own intellectual capacities.

I hope this answers your question.

Wouter