Ahh, Hans thinks he is agreeing with me but infact...

I believe that the curved boards will be easy to get an increase in performance with for even your average sailor.

On the a class you are constantly trying to reduce drag, downwind you dont have the option of doubling your sail area and as such you need to sail the boat very differently.

The F16 will be markedly quicker and easier to sail downwind with curved boards, dont gat caught up with all the discussion on shorter WL making it harder to sail with, the curved boards are never at an AOA that is having a negative effect of performance, unless you really screw up, but even then they are helping with your recovery from a nosedive etc.

The downsides are this:-

Added tooling costs
added production costs
you have to raise the windward board each tack/gybe to get best performance
there is a slight loss of righting moment, but the reduction in drag is compensation for this in the overall picture.

As to wayne's comment that the tooling cost is irrelevant... depends on the barrier to entry point, if the tooling is going to cost 15k (more than the hull tools) then its a big issue to factor in to the build costs. and I dont see anyone with F16 numbers in the 300's Hell even the Viper numbers are inflated and they are claiming 160 after 4 years production... makes the ROI seem pretty bad for a board tool. every now and then someone claims that their sisters uncle's neighbour can make a curved board tool for 20 bucks... but in reality its just an expensive thing to make a production quality tool for these things,