Haven't we reached the point with Macca that often the threads aren't rational any longer to the common sailor but rational to Macca, one of the party has to be "delusional", in your words not mine. From experiance of some fifty odd years of life I can only say that very often world champions make poor communicators and have a poor understanding of the needs of those much further down the chain ( those who actually buy all the goodies and thingies which keep the world champion as world champion ), in Bora's case he has been very good at promoting and helping those involved in foiling.

On the subject of stiffness, yes any rig tension is good and maintaining that tension is a good thing. But to do that will have far reaching consequences, at some point we will have to admit that further " stiffness and that is such a terrible decription of what we are talking about ) will have no further gain or limited gains without harming the structure overall.

When designing the boat I built I always envisaged a central beam taking all the rig loads including the forestay and an x beam ( plus single tube rear beam taking the side loadings, the AC then started to use a Y beam with additional wires as support. My reasoning was that for the extra 4-5 kilos of central beam the reduced loadings on the hulls and beams would easily be compensated. There were other advantages taken from windsurfing of allowing the mast base to slide forward (and sideways to reduce righting moment ) on the upwind legs. Time limits and cost dictated that this was just an idea but perhaps this year I might have a go.

Wood can be just as good as carbon if it is built correctly. It will never be as stiff and light as a composite carbon / glass structure in my opinion but I have seen many a discussion on this on the internet with arguments for and against such that if you take all things into account such as cost and availability, in small boat building it is a very good material to use, take the many Blade projects within the F16's as an example.