As a designer and builder of commercial "off the beach" catamarans for over 30 years, I have seen a lot of classes and size of cats come and go. Also a lot of rules and regulations applied to the different classes of race competitive cats. In the infancy of most class of cats, there generally were very few "rules" governing those classes and the ones that supplied the performances that was expected of them, proved successful in their proliferation. Many a "successful" class, over the years, incorporated more and more rules defining the class in an effort to keep each boat on the water as close to a "one design class" as possible. To a degree this was successful in that objective, but, these classes were gradually overtaken by either newer types of similar cats that performed better, or by existing classes that had the flexibility within their "rules" to smoothly incorporate "new" innovations. If any class is restricted from evolving by carrying the bagage of a "truck load" of restrictive rules that class will die. The problem that I see is that it is easy to incorporate new rules, but it is very difficult to "get rid" of ones, down the track, that are "restrictive" to the growth of the class.
That said I would like to make the following obsevations on the "proposed" rule changes.
Firstly, I have to agree with all that Greg says about the "glueing" of beams, except that I have not found "glued" beams to increase the performance by any "measurable" amount. Any differences that I have seen can be put down to purely the quality of the sailor and "anocdotal". so that in my opinion anyone who wants to waste their money by glueing their beams, has more money than sense.
Secondly the use of carbon fibre. Any one who is familiar with the costs of carbon fibre over the last 15 or so years, will know that it has been one of the only fibre reinforced plastics products (used in "fibreglassing") that has dramatically and consistantly DECREASED in cost. That is why it is being used more and more in the "boat building" industry, not because it is such a better product (which it is) but because the price is becoming more accessable to the general public. This is the trend that can be expected to continue the more that carbon is used. For that reason alone it is imperative that the use of carbon fibre HAS to be allowed full reign for use in the construction of any class that still wants to be around and relevent for this and the next generation of sailors
I think in one of the previous posts a price of $2,000 was stated for the costs of carbon fibre beams for an F16? well I am not sure were that price was sourced from but I purchase beams for an F16 (front and rear) for considerably less than $1,000 Australian, in fact for $1,000 Australian I could retail them and make an acceptable profit.
Carbon fibre, like it or not, IS the future in sailing, and any class that restricts its use is doomed to die.
In the 1970's there were similar arguments between the use of marine ply and fibreglass. Fibreglass was resisted vigourlessly by classes that built in ply and they argued that fibreglass was "to expensive, to heavy, to slow, and was just a passing "fad"! Most of those "ply" classes are now found only in books, and not on the water.
Darryl J Barrett