It has been a long time since I posted on this forum. Let me present myself. I'm a french sailor who passed 2 years in the US in 2007 and 2008. Before that, in france, I sailed an old F18 dart hawk for 3 or 4 years mainly with my wife. In the US I bought a laser that I raced regularly and since I'm back to france I purchased a used F18 capricorn.
I know francis cause he is the AHPC dealer but I did not discuss this matter with him. I also have no interest in any firms selling catamarans. I'm not a member and do not own an F16, mainly because it's way easier to find a used F18 than an F16. I'm sparing some money to buy a brand new F16 as soon as possible. Oh, and I also helped to translate into french the F16 website...
So here is my 2 cents and I would understand if you disregard it.
I was one of the first talking about the fact that the viper marketed itself as an F16 and a C104 and that would make it a sensible choice for a french sailor. French is one of the biggest catamaran market if not the biggest and indeed viper is selling very well here.
Why am I saying all this? Because I think that in no time the viper will become the most represented F16 design, if not already. If this assumption become true, there will be enough people racing on vipers to race on elapsed time at some events, in a OD manner. They probably will do so if some junks show up at an event with a full carbon viper at 107kg. Viper would then end up as a OD and F16 with no big manufacturers will end up with too few but light and very competitive boats. Someone wanting a high performance 16 ft catamaran (like me) will then have to chose between the two and will do depending of whether he is racing or not. Racers will likely choose a viper because of numbers of cats showing up at a race and the other will choose lighter F16 cause they don't want to drag too much weight on the beach. So, imho if the min weight rule is not amended there will be a split between viper and lighter F16 and I guess this is not what people wants.
In the past years I've always been opposed to a change of this min. weight rule. But I think that the success of the viper changed the situation. AHPC made a good work by selling their cats and now it will be difficult to become a fully grown formula class like the F18 without the viper and the associated sailors. They won't like to be beaten at the 2010 global challenge by a 107 kgs viper fitting the F16 rules... Either 104 or F16 or viper OD will survive in the long run, not all of them. I have not quite yet make up my mind, and I don't knnow the truth, but I think we might think seriously about the min rule weight and not just disregard it like 2 years ago. Situation has changed. It might be time to adapt.
