Jeff, my comments were in response to your opening sentence. I know too many sailors out there that get wrapped up with electronics rather than the important stuff and it drives me nuts!
And to your winter comments, don't be one of those people! I hear enough from Brogger on facebook. We all live in the north and we signed up for it! Go skiing and enjoy! hehe We got a storm last March that had 33", we just had a couple inches today and a couple hours north got 2'. But that's for another thread.
One last comment about the tactics to respond to Mike.
Mike I was saying that these tactics apply to a H16 less than an F18. I know they still apply. But F18s definitely tack and jibe faster and get up to speed faster than a 16.
I never really raced the 16 competitively outside the youth events (including mexico youth worlds) but I have done several decent 16 events in NJ in the last few years and was pretty competitive when I wasn't bored out of my mind in light air. I have a lot of work to do in the F18 too and luckily I've been working as hard as most of the other top teams so I've been growing with them. While my results really haven't changed much at local events, we have been getting a lot faster as a group. But the biggest jump in my sailing was learning all the tactics and general sailing skills that I learned in college and post college dinghy sailing. That really helped my learning curve even though I wasn't a very good dinghy sailor, just being in those type of fleets and being exposed to that helped a lot and we also did a lot of work as a team talking about strategy and tactics.
Jeff, I haven't read the other posts but I wouldn't think Kattack would be that hard to use for small events, we used it in college a few times.