Agree with there being little difference at this time, but !

What I do find with my boat which is probably quite low volume compared with the later generation boats is that at higher speeds the inclined foils do generate some lift, one only has to move my butt foward or back 100mm ( altering the AOA )to see the difference of how the foward part of the hull is higher in the water.

What I think also happens is that this negates the need to trap out with the spinny up, the boat if heated up and the speed increased to a point where the lee hull is high in the water, will go downwind just as well with me either sitting in or trapping. I'm not sure why but I think the extra loading on the lee hull from trapping, causes the lee hull to submerge more and thus drag over comes the advantage.

With the much fatter latter generation hulls I think there is enough volume ( width ) to create a form of "planing" which in effect is already making the hull a foil. Those wider hulls trying the inclined board are very much first generation ( the Nacra F16 is starting to move things on with their long high aspect boards ) and due to the ventilation issues we are seeing ( just like the early moth tube vids where they had to incline the board a few degrees ) plus lack of adjustment to best set up a boat,are probably not good examples to be using for justification of or not of , foils.

What if we can generate planning and lift and get it useable. I think this is where the A Class is heading, I personally don't feel they have got there yet but with the new S boards such as the Carbonic boats, they stand some chance.

But we on the other hand have some advantages that the A's do not. We have a rig which is much more powerful than the A's to utilse foils better. We have no max or min overall board rules so we can move the foils outwards or even have the top of the withdrawn boards wider than our max width. We have an extra pair of hands to operate the foils better ( see the Phantom 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5doBIv3TVbA&feature=player_embedded to see what can be achieved ), we have a jib which balance the boat better upwind, we have a very large spinnny for downwind, we are wider at 2.5m and I could think of other reasons as well.

Sooner or later someone will pop us the myth of expense of the S Boards or C boards. Virtually all board moulds are now CNC machine cut. Machines do not care whether it is a straight run or constantly arced, it just another point in time that the machine head must reach. So yes the mould may be marginally more expensive but only marginally. Yes there will be more carbon to strengthen the board due to it now effectively lifting and carrying weight, but that extra material cost in the whole scheme of things will be only a small part of the total cost. At the moment the A class boards are falling in cost as more and more manufacturers are coming into the market.

So do not diss foils, they are the future, perhaps not fully foiling but certainly foil assist in our case. Perhaps we as an semi experimental class should be allowing any board shape or size, the privateers will experiment and the manufacturers will lag behind as usual but we will modernise as we go along, making the class much more appealing to all.