Maybe I can put the statement on the Tornado website in context.

The Marstrom Tornado is very stiff long lived boat compared to any production boat I have seen. (A best quality wood epoxy boat could be a little better but it will be a lot more expensive.) A life of 7-10 racing seasons is reasonable. The worst case would up and coming Olympic team. A boat would be the race boat for ~3 years, the training boat for ~4 years and then sold to buy the next race boat. These boats will be sailed HARD several times a week. A boat that is sailed less, will last longer. I have a 10 year old boat that, the boat at least, is still competitive in the top ranks. The rules for the Tornado allow just about anything in running rigging and controls so most of the controls that Wouter talked about could be adapted to the Tornado.

The early Tornado's were fragile and short lived. In hard sailing, structural failures were not uncommon. I saw a raced out early wooden boat disintegrate crossing a power boat wake. Marstrom was one of the people who applied aerospace engineering principles to how the boat was built to make it last. His boats are not uniform lay-ups. They are complex inside. They use different types of cloth, core, and structure to put strength where it is needed. Since puncture resistance to a screwdriver is not part of normal racing, the weight is put where it resists sailing loads. In simple terms these have become purpose built race boats. They expect 100% of the boats to be raced hard as compared to 20% of the production boats

Also don't think the comment about production boats was limited to catamarans, in fact it may have been directed toward Olympic boats. The boat that comes to mind first is the Laser. A Laser will last about 1 year as a race boat. It's nice boat but it is just not built to survive continuous racing. A Hobie Wave is a tank in comparison. However, it is cheap and replacement parts are available. Production boats that were originally intended as inexpensive water toys were never designed to handle the loads of day in day out racing.

My experience on production polyester glass catamarans is the life is 2-4 years hard racing 4-6 light racing. After that that the hulls start to flex. I suspect the life limits are caused by quality control. I hear and see delaminating problems caused by bad lay-up. This is unheard of in prepreg construction. Big voids show up quickly, small voids don't show up for years but can drastically reduce the life of a boat. The structural problems I have had with production boats were centered around previously unsuspected voids in the lay-ups. Some boats are built well and last a long time, others - ?

There is a big difference between race boats and volume production boats. Race boats are at best built in the hundreds per year. They can either be built by a small company or as a special line of a big company. They are built to race and practice day in day out at the worst conditions allowed by the race authority. Volume production boats are intended to be cost effective for rental fleets and schools, sailed occasionally by happy couples in nice weather on scenic lakes or bought on impulse at a boat show sailed 3 times and then left in the backyard for 10 years.