Nope, not buying heavy is fast. Anybody can say they own the fleet if they get a clear lane. I would say that you did well on races where you had clear air because you had clear air not because you were heavy.
2010 F16 National Results I would say the top three owned the fleet and I know they weren't sailing heavy. Robbie can pretty much have the pick of the litter when it comes to getting crew and I've never seen him sail with a fat boy, not even on an F18! Sorry man, but I look at the pointy end of the fleet to see what's fast.
I think we had four or five dnf/s's at that event?
I can also tell you that I rarely can do something with out a blunder. I'm just saying what is fast. We had a couple of races where we were pounding on Robbie/JW, then we'd piss it all up by capsizing or doing something stupid. We had two seperate cleat failures that ruined a bunch of races. That has nothing to do with boat speed. I'm saying you gain more on the Viper being heavy in the big wind, than you lose in the light air. Even with a heavily pin favored start line, we'd roll the fleet on the first upwind starting at the committee boat, and we fought like hell to be at the committee boat always, because we had to. Plus, Dan is 6'3" I think, and I'm 6'2", thats a lot of lever with that 385lbs.
Look at this Tradewinds. George and I had never sailed together before. Six weeks prior George had a tumor removed so he wasn't 100%. Before busting the boat we got a 6th and a 7th. We were 375lbs, and I didn't see us breaking into the top 10 often with the crowd that was there, but we did.
I would rather race a Viper at 375 than at 275 any day of the week.
