Listen everybody,

The measurement certificate is part of the F16 class rules and has been since the very beginning. You can't unilaterally decide to not adhere to that principle.

Now, I agree that the current EU procedures around the measuring are unsatisfactory, but that can never be an excuse to abandon the principle completely.

I feel the F16 class should arrange for official measuring of boats (on appointment !) at major events at no costs or reduced costs. I for one got burned badly myself last time I payed a 100 bucks for a measurement certificate and will be very supportive of a free-of-charge measurement procedure. If we all want a free-of-charge system then we'll have one, it is simply that simple.

With respect to the role of a measurement certificate. It guarantees that the boat has been in a full compliant mode at least ones in its life time thus forcing every owner to initially spend money on getting full-compliant components. If he still wants to cheat then he needs to spend ADDITIONAL money. Also, the RC can now always demand that the boat be restored to its original form knowing that the compliant components are around / had been around. This makes for a lot stronger case to enforce full compliance without any claims made to "sad stories". The certificate also has important political benefits. One of which is the fact that owner actively declared his boat to be fully-compliant (and was checked for it). This makes the charge of cheating alot more powerful when the boat is later found to be none compliant. Without the certificate the owner can always claim that he didn't know. With a certificate he can't. Note in this example that the rules explicetly state that any new (measureable) item that is replaced requires a remeasuring (of that item) and that doing so is the responsibility of the owner. Thus it creates an environment where the responsibilty of the owner is made very clear. Another important aspect is to make sure the suppliers are delivering on spec products. The Central class organisation gethers the measured data (perferable when the boat is completely new) and can present the suppliers with accurately measured off-sets and easily show a trend. The supplier has then no choice but to quickly improve the situation or risk losing his F16 related business. This is not academic as such a thing has already happened in the past with sails for example.

I won't adress all related issues in this post, but there is more to the whole measuring principle then just making the lives of the owners difficult. So everyone is kindly ask to comply with this and stop being only focussed on your own specific situation.

Wouter