Matt,
You really shouldn't go on a public forum and flame a class that you do not have a full perspective on. You are hurting the reputation Opti Class and catamaran class at the same time.
I'm not going to respond in detail to your post because this isn't the place..
1)you've obviously already made up your mind to be anti-opti
2)you obviously have no idea what you are talking about, and if you want to disagree than just look at your comment about a new opti costing as much as a new Hobie 16. A new Opti starts at around $1,800 (club), $2,400 (decent race boat or charter boat) and goes up to around $3,500 (brand new import or custom boat). A new Hobie 16 retails for around $11,000.
3)You think full time coaches are so expensive? Our cost per sailor for an 8 hour day of sailing is $40-60 and the coach to sailor ratio is never above 7:1 and usually it's 5:1. That's a max of $480 for 1 day of practice for 2 months (what many of these kids do). I've paid more than $480 for a long weekend of coaching for myself.
And just FYI Opti Nationals are not the cream of the crop Opti sailors. I've been at the last 3 Opti Team Trials which is the best kids in the country and I think you were be surprised to see the difference in these kids were the kids at nationals and local regattas. There is a large contigent of opti parents, sailors, and coaches that you have obviously seen and stereotyped this class. However, this is not the majority and definitely not the top of the class.

Back to the topic... Sam I wear a Magic Marine CE lifejackt that I love. Most of our fleet wears CE jackets but some of the top sailors wear inflatable USCG approved lifejackets. Personally I think this is sketchy but the arguement could be made that they could swim out from under the boat easily (as long as they aren't unconcious).