Hi Sam, We are communicating better but still not totally. It is no bull that the ARC17 has options of unirig or unirig plus jib or uni rig plus jib plus spinnaker. When you get to the order boat form, the orderer checks off the options they want even down to the color of the spinnaker. Here is an example of our communications problem. When I talk about beach cats, I am talking about a small catamaran WITHOUT dagger boards; a boat you sail on and off the beach. To the beginning sailor dagger boards can be a real problem. Try coming in through even small surf with boards down. New sailors sometimes forget about the boards. I've seen it happen and sometimes it is not pretty. The ARC17 is a "keep it simple" boat. If you could see how it is rigged, I'm sure you would agree. Comparing it to a board boat is a non contest. The 17 is a boardless boat a with low aspect ratio sail plan. It is not intended/designed to be fast to windward. The 17 always has always been fast on a reach and downwind. This is the way beginning sailors like to sail. If they want to race at all, they want to drag race on a reach. The ARC 17 is not a racing boat, it is a beginners boat, a boat for people to learn how to sail on. Don't compare it to a racing boat because it is not a designed as a racing boat. I took the ARC17 to the Tradewinds race for people to SEE IT. The boat has no US Sailing PN. It is a new boat. The best shot at a PN for the Tradewinds Race only was to use the SC17 PN and make adjustments for the things that are different between the SC17 and ARC17, boat width and sail plan. For the next race it sails in, I think a better number would be to take the last four heats of the Tradewinds and reverse engineer a PN for the ARC17 and calculate what the PN needed to be to make the ARC17 tie on corrected time with each one of the other boats in these heats. Then throw out the odviously high numbers, if there are any, and average the best of the low numbers. This should be a more correct PN number for the boat. This is how you get a correct PN for a new boat. This is the process in action. You are right, Sam, there is no ARC17 class at this time. There are two boats in the whole world. You have to start a new class somewhere. When the class grows to ten boats or so, an association will be formed. There is an ARC22 class organization with officers and race schedule and class rules etc. Every 22 that has been sold came with a book of class rules to keep the boat/sails etc class legal. A US National Championship Regatta is scheduled for this year. All SC and ARC boats are welcome. The class has a web site with forums, etc. All ARC products have class rules for platform geometry, rigging geometry, max sail sizes, etc. I hope you are feeling better real soon, Sam. Bill
