Nacraman, The old pros insisted that the Marstrom Tornado was the best two man cat package on the water... Easy to sail... a true challenge to sail well, a boat suitable for the olympics.. The Marstrom 20 raised the bar by cutting weight and updating the design for a Windward Leeward racer.... The N17 is the culmination of the fiasco that demanded mixed teams and not open.. and locked multihulls into mixed competition (not open) forever. This selection process is the result of compromise... The N17 looks like its harder to sail and obviously a true challenge to sail flat and well. Fix the boat so that its easy to sail, aka a good boat, and it will remain an Olympic boat... (Hell.... the venerable laser is the Olympic boat and so the point is... the equipment is not determinative)
No doubting the quality of the Tornado (I learnt to sail cats on a Tornado and it is the only boat that I own and I love it!)......but as you said it is a "two man cat package" and the olympic requirement for 2016 is a mixed team boat suited to that 120kg to 140kg weight range (and that rules the big T out).......the Marstrom 20 is/was a great boat, but really only one is now sailed in anger in Europe, and that is heavily modified with 12' beam, 3 sail rig, F20 C mast, curved raking boards (about to be converted to full foiling), t foil rudders and renamed as the Vampire (owned by a good friend of mine). The only Marstrom 20 original parts are the hulls and they have been heavily modified with replacement cases, etc....the rest of the European fleet have moved to F20 C's because it thrashes the standard Marstrom 20 (but thats a whole other story!)......now whether the mixed team criteria is a fiasco is something we could argue about till we are old and grey, it is how it is.......yes the 17 is a difficult boat to master without doubt and so it should be.....we are talking about top athletes at the top of their game.....you mentioned skying as an analogy to olympic sailing.....lets take a different analogy of the top end of motor car racing...F1 cars and Indy cars are a difficult test of driving skills that could be replaced with standard road cars that are "easy" to drive so drivers could concentrate their skills on tactics, etc......is that what we want?......if thats the case when applied to the sailing world we need to get rid of the 49er and the 49erfX as well as the 17!.....the selection of boats that are used as olympic equipment cover a broad range of sailing technique and skills....if you don't have the right skill to sail a 17 sail a laser, simple....
I still actively encourage you to speak to the US teams who sail the 17 at Olympic level about how they feel about the boat and strongly encourage you to go have a sail on a 17.....
