Carl,

That's an interesting point regarding open class boats. One for which there is a lot of resistance. I heard a rumour (and it may very well be only that) that a carbon fiber 20' boat was encouraged to not enter the Tybee500. I don't know if there is any truth to that but it is an interesting situation.

Personally, I'm riding the fence on the issue. I like class racing - it's a more pure form of competition. But on the other hand, allowing developmental boats can be exciting and can bring about new technological advances. It also is riskier for the race organizers from a safety standpoint for several reasons; new (a.k.a. unproven) designs will have more potential for structural/safety issues. Having boats with varying speed potentials means the competitors will be farther away from each other with less possibility to assist an ailing boat and/or crew (an OBX500 team assisted another boat on at least two occasions this year).

I think there should be an open developmental 'bring it on' class sometime in the future for the Atlantic 1000 although I do believe that the event may be a little young for it right now - they have a great thing going now and it will be interesting to see how the momentum moves forward next year (hopefully we'll see you on the start line Carl!). I would like to see some mean machines show up one day in the future.