Yes the boat has been around 2 1/2 years but few boats were sold in the first year to 18 months, my guess probably 60 of these boats have been sold in last 12 months. Thats brilliant and good for the class and cat sailing in general.

But my question was " how does that compare with other Formulae boats such as the F18's". Again my guess would be that is probably more than any one manufacturers single boat type. Macca would argue that the F18 market is probably "mature" now but there has been a number of launches of new types this year and in my view the majority of those sales would be to top flight competitors rather than less competition and casual orientated sailors that predominate our class.

I do sympathise though with the original manufacturers though who have done all the ground work and hard PR slog and then along comes a second generation boat and sweeps all aside.

I remember spending over 5 years developing a product into a niche market, very slow sales to begin with and then slowly building up a good market. When the numbers of sales became obvious to competitors, they to joined the fray and my sales figures obviously diminished for a year or two until we to bought a new generation of equipment to the market. Sadly its not always best to be first in marketing and profitability terms.