As John said, there are some balance of power concerns in the current structure and they lead to the kinds of situations we see here now. There are 4 countries (FRA, ITA, NED, GER) that control half the votes of 22 countries total. So if those 4 want a rule, then they get it...

There is no polling of their members to decide what position the general membership wants to take on issues and the information supplied to the voting members is also not complete or verified. So the decisions are compromised and influenced unduly resulting in the mess we see today.

As for the actual arguments on the rule changes, below is an extract from the analysis I did on the recent class rule changes. I have completed this for the sail cloth issues as well.

There are 2 arguments presented to the WC regarding the use of paint:-
1. “fairing and painting to an ultra-high finish it is a very labour intensive and expensive process”
2. “there are popular paints and coatings in professional sailing that have been proven to give a performance advantage”


Modern paint systems allow builders to spray into the mould in the same way as gelcoat and they can be sprayed on the hull as a combined filler/topcoat. The painting process can be quicker overall than the total time to finish a gelcoated hull, hence there is a cost saving using some of the modern paint systems.
Additionally there is nothing in the rules to prevent any manufacturer or competitor from fairing and preparing their gelcoated hulls to an ultra-high finish. As an example in 2009 Herbert Dercksen and I faired and prepared our Nacra Infusion to what could only be described as an ultra-high finish. The boat was longboarded, filled and the hull surface was professionally prepared at considerable expense. My point here is that preventing painted hulls does not prevent fairing and preparing hulls to a very high standard. There is no feasible way for the class to prevent this expensive practice other than to encourage manufacturers to produce high quality finishes that do not require post delivery work to rectify manufacturing blemishes.

The second point (claiming that Epoxy is advantaged over other paints) is not backed up by any facts or references, There are 3 main suppliers of paints in the yachting industry, Resene, Alexseal and Awlgrip. Each has various products including epoxy, polyurethane and mixes of epoxy and urethane. No one product that has proven to have any performance advantage. This is evidenced by the spread of different products in the worlds top yacht fleets. For example the 10 existing AC45’s are painted in products supplied by all three suppliers, the same spread of products is apparent in the TP52 class. There is not one product that is dominant and as such the overwhelming evidence is contrary to those claims.
To put it simply: Just because somebody heard that product X was better than product Y is not justifiable grounds for the class to ban something that is standard practice in the boat building industry.

The new rule has effectively prevented the construction of boats in wood-epoxy and there is no provision in the rule for existing boats that are painted.
Just how older boats are refurbished now is also a mystery, spraying gelcoat onto a 5 year old F18 is not feasible as any industry professional will attest.