Wouter, You are making a very good argument to limit masts to Alloy...
As I have said previously,and you have just confirmed, the Carbon mast adds a huge amount of cost over the Alloy option and as you all keep telling me there is no advantage in using Carbon so why add cost for no gain?
And if there is a gain, how can you expect boats to compete equally?
Andrew,
The rub with a bunch in this group seems to stem from this comment. You seem to be proposing a state where everything (or most things) are restricted and not open to use, trial etc. as is the case with the F18, Tornado etc – classes that you have come from.
An attraction to the class for a lot of the owners is that it allows for a certain freedom in experimentation. IF the item in question does not stand to fundamentally change the class equilibrium, why ban it? If somebody wants to have an all carbon machine (even though they will gain no appreciable advantage) why should they not be able to have one.
On the mast issue, you and Wouter are failing to recognize what all the costs are involved in them. Aluminum is soft and damages easily and is not reapirable, so a relatively high percentage of the sections are scrapped way before you could start looking at only using ones of the min weight. They have to be run in mill quantities, so 30+ masts, even at a low price per unit are very expensive to purchase, ship and stock, for whatever period of time it takes to use them up. Small builders are not going to want to inventory mill quantities of aluminum extrusions(There is more than just the mast too). Shipping individual extrusions is ridiculously expensive (not to mention the shipper ruins them half the time when shipped alone) The cost with shipping of aluminum becomes much closer to the total cost of a carbon mast depending on locations. You cannot build your own Aluminum extrusion, but it is possible to build your own carbon mast if you wished. The list goes on further if you wish.
Again though, with the tip weight rule an appreciably faster boat has yet to show. If it does not matter there are many reason to keep it for the good of the class, and other than fear or impression, there is no real reason to ban it.
