Seeker,

While I am not disagreeing with you, there are many point you have not considered.

Firstly, it is more than possible to build a boat close to minimum weight without blowing the budget. Smaller manufactures and home builders have proven this. However this does come as a trade off on two fronts, durability and stiffness.

As a major manufacture we have to guarantee our boats, and in Europe that is 2 years by law. If you under build your designs then you are effectively playing Russian Roulette with your business. The other option is you have to charge more per boat to cover the high level of warranty claims.

The second point of stiffness is something that get highly over looked as a integral design feature.I'm not going to get into the "He said" - "She said" - "my numbers show" arguments here... As an engineer I know we can all take different conclusions from the same results. But the fact is stiffness comes at a cost, either dollars or KG (lb for the Americans among us). You have to choose the trade off between weight Vs stiffness. On a side note I believe this is a good feature of the F16... that is that the designer must make another critical decision.

While I agree that some manufactures choose to build easy / cheep boats in favor of "High Teching it up" I think it is rude to assume it is "Apathy? Ineptitude? Laziness? Greed? Arrogance?. In all situations the decisions have been carefully thought through and choices made.

I encourage anyone who feels they can do a good job at designing / manufacturing a catamaran to do so... then consider doing it commercially.

Oh and more "on topic"... does this forum enjoy the banter with macca???? this is the second thread specifically aimed at him. Just an observation.