I heard some reports from a couple of teams who went to the Olympic training camp in Miami. A few youth teams on F16 went and sailed with some of the Olympic 17 teams. While the boat is new and there was not a lot of head to head time, the 16s appeared faster or at least as fast, especially downwind in the conditions where they were lining up together.

The 17s were thrown together to provide a submission for selection as the Olympic boat. Anything wrong with them cannot be changed and the boat will remain unoptimized for the next 3+ years at least. The Olympic teams sailing them will spend huge amounts of time and money to make these boats go as fast as possible. As far as a rating goes it will be driven by the world class sailors competing for an Olympic medal. Your weekend warrior buying one of these is not going to compete with the top guys and no way will be able to drive the boat to the numbers that are going to be given to the boat because of the top guys.

Maybe long term, there will end up being enough used boats coming from the teams to field a fleet of “regular” sailors. In the short term this looks to be a very expensive disappointment if you think you can buy one and actually compete.