Hello Bill,

Of course the F16 and Taipan classes can only hope to sell as many boats as the ARC-17 and SC-17 class have sold so far.

Without this great 17 foot product line many of us would never have seen the light of starting up a class for the sailor looking to singlehand and doublehand a high performance spinnaker boat.

It seems thought we have made a mistake by opting to allow boards. A boardless design like the 17's is indeed superiour. Our mistake but we can't have everything, can we.

And of course we in Europe have the nacra 5.5 sloop and uni which the US hasn't so indeed you must be the first US builder to offer such a flexible boat.

It is also our wish that both classes will prosper. Although it is already a given that the ARC-17 will be extremely succesful. The F16 class will have a lot of catching up to do with respect the 17's. This omni present class has indeed set the benchmark to which we may only strive to achieve as well.

It is also great to see that Yves Parlier ( http://www.parlier.org/site02/accueil/1024x768.html ) has taken a good look at your SC-17 testbed of 10 years ago ( http://www.catsailor.com/wwwboard/messages/63230.html )and learned from it so that he now can try to expand on the planing hull idea to the French ORMA cirquit. It has been long overdue that the French got off their love for conservative designs and tried something new.

Lets hope he does not forget to bring a compass along to take the necessary measurements.

I'm sure that in a 100 years the SC-17 and ARC-17 product line will be viewed as the mother of all modern high performance catamarans. They will be present in all nautical musea as the prototype beach catamaran and sure enough it will be THE catamaran in the olympics.


Good Sailing,

Wouter