One person may be happy with a standard Taipan 4.9, narrow and small beams. The next person may be willing to make a carbon/nomex min weight Viper. You allow this freedom in the rules and someone or even a few may pursue it.
Indeed, I'm very happy with my 64 mm flexing Taipan F16 (when put to the rather heavy flexing test, this is not the flexing on the water while sailing, mind you !)
I would love to have a modern Falcon, Aussie Blade or a Stealth who all flex three times as little as my poor homebuild.
But I don't delude myself in thinking that I can win anything more then 30 seconds per race that way and I admit that my F16 is not very stiff when compared to the new boats. It still sails like a dream though.
You are also right to "the next person" may persue an all carbon/nomex/diamond inlays F16 and indeed I think that is fine as I can buy a competitive boat to his one-off for just 17.500 bucks.
In the end, his glitter one-off F16 will present the biggest example of how to waste lots of good money on what amounts to a gain of 15 seconds per hour racing. When faced with the same choice I think that I will spend my money on expert coaching and lots of training (lost income).
As such the FORMULA F16 class rules will have done their job. For it is not the responsibility of such class rules to prevent stupidity in its class members but to merely level the playing field and allow normal people with normal budgets to have a fair chance.
Wouter
