Mark,the Tornado is gone, over, irrelevant. I would much rather have seen the Tornado come back because it's something I could have sailed with my current crew. But constantly looking back at that boat and time isn't going to help progressing what we have now which is a great multihull olympic class.
If you insist that open is the way to go you are irrelevant as well. Yes there have been some teams that have had a hard time with the mixed concept and others that were dissapointed. But how can you argue with the numbers and activity going on in this class? Personally I think it's great. Look at the caliber of sailors it's attracted from other classes that had no other option until now.
How can you use the word "fiasco"? And how can you say in good authority that it has "locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever."?
The photo in question is of Frank Cammas... I'm pretty sure he knows what's fast.
Mark, you have no idea when this was, some of the 17 sailors do this for fun between and after races. That's why (like in this photo) there are rarely other boats around. I'm guessing there is only a marginal condition where boards all the way down double trapped downwind is an advantage.
Yes we've seen it happen in videos during racing. Maybe those teams need to get their boards up sooner which is not a fault of the boat.