Don't get me wrong here, I like Frank and think he has done a lot for sailing around the world. But when it comes to his ideas about Cats and 18ft skiffs he has lost the plot. Here in Sydney we often have the oppourtunity to run against the skiffs. I have never been beaten upwind and when we were not using kites it was close downwind. Now that we have kites on the T we are in another world as far as performance. During the 18ft skiff worlds held here earlier in the year we matched up against the fleet on several occasions, We had just fitted the new rig to the Tornado, We were much faster up wind and much to the surprise of the skiffs were faster by an even larger margin downwind. This was in light winds (about 10 kts) since then we have had many runs with the skiff in up to 25kts and each time we are substantially quicker. Recently I have been sailing a Taipan 4.9 sloop with a kite, again the little cat is much faster on all points of sail compared to the skiffs, In all conditions. <br><br>