Was this just a test, or do they plan on developing these new and longer boards. Im all for curved boards, but not ones with this much "performance enhancing" ability. While we are at it, lets do some blood doping too!
The development for the A-class is limited due to the box rule where the tip distance must be at least 1.5 meter. The curved boards on the A-class could probably make a jump when you get close to 20 knots of speed, but you don't want that....
This is M20 we are talking about, and don't se any reason why they shouldn't use curved board for semi foiling if that proves to be faster. There are no rules for the M20 right now, they use all kinds of rigs and also extra wide boats, so whats the problem if they start to use foils?
I haven't heard about a foiling cat that can beat a non foiling cat of the same size around a upwind/downwind track. For pure top speed a Tornado on foils has proved to be faster than a non foiling Tornado.
One of the M20 on Round texel has two centerboard trunk, one for straigt and another one for curved boards, but it turned out to be a light wind regatta so they left the curved boards on the beach.
/hakan
