Nacra are in the business to make and produce boats, at the moment the F18's are old hat and sales are slow. Create something modern and desiriable and a lot of the sailors who may have not thought about buying a new boat because their old boat is doing OK, may well open their check books.

Why would they set up a new F formulae, OD is not going to compete with the F18 setup, setup a formulae with boats people want to aspire to and that formulae may quickly take over generating lots of new sales, ask AHPC what numbers of Viper they sell versus the C2. Get in early and dominate the sales and your production increases dramatically, get in late and you get the scraps. Get in early and you set the rules to suit your production.

Manufacturers also under estimate the desire to modify to suit ones own needs, OD stifles this. The greatest pain for any dealer network is the manpower needed to supply spares and parts, in small business's you want to sell and move on,take the money and not have to deal with peoples problems. Get the design and reliability right first time and your staffing levels are dramatically lowered.

F16 is not for all crews, F18's are now outdated technology, perhaps its time for a new F17.5 class. Perhaps the T Class was a good pointer to this with its demise within only a few years of its dropping from the Olympics, it may have been a very good boat, but people like new design and fashion and so they went else where.

Another analogy perhaps is car production, why do you think new models are launched virtually every 2 years, to sell loads of new ones. With modern CNC production of moulds and the likes, the cat manufacturers are going to have to do the same and can do the same, just look at how short a design and production time it has taken for NACRA to produce the 17.5.