At the speed we travel, the drag of say 1mm larger wire is insignificant, what is not insignificant is the spinnaker snuffers and all the weavers loom up front. But any reduction is a reduction, the A class seem to have all gone over to 2.5mm ???? wire ( someone will fillin that blank please ) which is about 25% stronger than the normal wire we use.

Now if only we could stop the creep of synthetic cord we certainly could have both lighter and smaller diameter.