Nothing on the Tornado was reinforced or 'beefed' up when the new sailplan was introduced. You just added the bowsprit, changed the jib sheeting system and hoisted the sails.

Now, several broken masts later, Marstrøm has a new mast with thicker walls. Some teams also use a more solid Hobie extrusion. You can sail very well with the old mast, but have to take care not to break it when it's really 'honking'.

You have to remember that Gøran Marstrøm uses max allowed radii on the crossbeams on his Tornados. This makes the boats stiff, and you can not increase the profiles within the class rules. So there really is not that much you can beef up on the Tornado with regards to the platform.

There was some speculation about wether the support stays from the bowsprit to the bows would break the bows. But it looks fine up til now.


The Tornado class, Mitch Booth and several others did intensive testing before the 'sport' was launched. They experimented with a spi that was sheeted to the back beam (i.e. really large spi) which was really dangerous as you could not see anything to your leeward..

The sailarea on a Tornado is now app. 25 square meters, and about 20 ~ 25 square in the spi.