I'm afrain that we must face facts! and the idea that a class of any cat, today can be based around a "home built" craft, just doesn't work in the real world. Tell me, how many "home built" Tornadoes has anyone seen on the water over the last 15 or more years? (let alone internationally competitive! there aren't any! How many "A" class cats (although they still try to promote the "home Build idea) have won at international standard? Although there are "home built" "A"s around they still tend to be built by "professional" builders/designers, and, if successful, have all become "production cats" built by professionals, so I would be loath to call them "home designed/built" in the sence that most refer to true "home built". Why has no one built a "home made" F18? I wouldn't exactly call the builders of the "Blade" amateurs (they may get offended at the derogatory suggestion) The idea of every second sailor going out and designing and building and succesfully competing with their own cat is a great dream, but I'm afraid that's what it is in today's world! a great dream! It requires too much expence, experience, promotion, time, and knock backs for an "amateur" (and I use that word with the greatest of respect) to have a better than a one in 10,000 chance of being even partially successful. The market for cats has changed so dramatically over the last 40 plus years. When most sailing craft were being build purely out of ply wood, it was possibly to design your own craft and have a reasonable chance of success at a quite modest investment, but as the industry has adopted more and more the exclusive use of fibre reinforced plastics, the development costs have risen to the point that to justify the tooling, mould, plant, etc costs to produce just one set of hulls, it has passed out of the financial reach of the "average" sailor to be exposed so much capital investment. (would YOU invest up to half the cost of an average suburban home into something that there are absolutely no gaurantees that you will even recoup a small part of your investment, or better still, would your wife let you?)
The future of any class/formula of cat today is totally dependent upon the "manufacture" getting fully committed and involved. If they are not fully in there (I'm sorry to say) THEN THERE IS NO CLASS.
So unlike "classes" of cats, the concept of the "formula" helps, even encourages, manufacture's to design and produce cats within the perimeters of that formula as they don't have to go out and only promote their cat and their "class", but instead they can compete against All the cats within the "formula" on an equal footing. This makes a lot of practical sense to the manufacturers. Thats why I say that the most important first step is for SOMEONE to definatively define just what the dimensions of an F14 are!
Regardless of the prevailing wind conditions in any given area, we have found, over many years of experience, that to take the beam of a 14 foot cat out past the, half the length of the hulls, ie 14' long, 7' wide, has always created a less than perfect balance, (and any one who advocates some ridiculous width of 8'6 or as I've read here even 10 or 12 feet, really doesn't know what the Hell they are talking about). To carry HUGE amounts of sail area I place in exactly the same boat (pardon the pun) as to carry the "right" amount of sail on the correctly balanced platform will always prove successful to any of the "monsters" throughout the full range of wind and water condition, whether your on inland lakes with light conditions, or if your sailing in the most extreme conditions in the north sea.
Darryl J Barrett