This is a really tough subject. I've sat in on the World Council meetings, emails, and national meetings about this. It's a great debate how this can be done. But the bottom line is all the current F18 sailors love their boats for what they are. If we could have them be lighter sure we'd love them even more but not at the cost of losing sailors because their boats are no longer competitive.
My Infusion and most of them that have been coming out are light. Mine is 381 lbs.... I can't notice a difference at all.
Bach, As far as the class being dead. I can appreciate your standpoint but every class goes through waves, look where the A class was 5 years ago or so. There are definitely patches of F18s that are doing poorly but actually nationwide we are doing better.
CRAW, CRAM, SAN FRAN bay area, San Diego, Northeast are all doing strong with new owners in the fleets and regularly getting 10-15 boats at multiple weekend events. We don't get 20-30 boats local regattas anymore but we have a lot more regattas and a fleet that is spread out in diversity, age, and etc.
I think the blue collar, weekend warrior aspect of the F18 fleet is what we all love, but it also hurts the class in that we can't always get away from work to travel to events or have the fanciest newest equipment, but at the end of the day it's okay because the events will be there and you can do just fine on a cheap platform. Hopefully someday all the dots connect and we can get more boats together in one place.
Event promotion is also tough, it comes down to volunteers and you get what you pay for. I'd love to have a full PR and Media team for each event and helping me with the class, but instead it's mostly been falling on my shoulders with support periodically from the other board members. The Organizers sometimes do a good job but are limited by their life responsibilities on top of organizing the event.
All that being said, the class is alive and well, if from your view doesn't reflect that then please step up and help!
Regards,
Todd Riccardi