I think Wouter's comments were more along the lines of; if you really want to prove superior design elements, then design it within the arena of other existing designs. For example, if I build a go-kart that's twice as wide and has three times the engine against a standard, more conventional, go-kart and win - what have I proven? If I want to prove that my go-karts designs are faster, then I should build my go-kart within the current popular parameters. By all means, we should build the wide one if it will sell, but we can't really get excited about having superior design elements based on the fact that we're beating more conventional ones. To say that these boats should be a "reality check" to boats that are designed within different constraints is a bit of a stretch. If you took the SC20TR, lopped 4 feet off it's beam and 6' from it's mast such that it falls in the same category as the boats we seem to be claiming superiority over, things could look a bit differently. Where do you think an SC20TR would place racing boat for boat with a carbon Marstrom 20 (even though the Marstrom is still not as wide and doesn't carry as much sail area)?

Bill himself has indicated that the rating on the ARC17 is a bit soft and it's public knowledge that the rating on the SC20 is not very accurate (A Nacra 6.0NA owes a SC20TR, who's mast is nearly 6' taller and beam is 4' wider, time). The SC / ARC boats are more powerfull and faster than their ratings. So we can't really point to race results to say that one is better than the other. The standard for comparison is known to be faulty.

Don't get me wrong; I like the SC20 and the ARC series, I like the idea of a 12' wide boat, or experimenting with the boundaries of the shared lift concept, or adding more sail area to make it faster - but if these concepts are so revolutionary and successful, why don't we see a boat in the highly competative classes and formulas with these features? If it's really because all the other manufacturers are dumb, why don't we see an ARC conform to one of said classes to prove it? I guarantee that if a 'shared lift' ARC F18 was capable of outruning most other F18s it would sell like there is no tomorrow - ARC wouldn't be able to build them fast enough.