Hi Mary,
I will only talk technical things with you on the subject of male vs female sailing contests. I'm not going to go to those "other places".
Mary said," It does not have to do with whether they are heavy enough to hold the boat down".

Mary,
The mechanics of the situation have very much to do with why men and women don't compete against each other in the high performance boats. Women don't compete against men in the Laser class because they can't hold the boat down. Give the women a trapeze on the Laser against men hiking and women can be competitive.
The biggest single problem with the concept of "one design sailboat racing" is that people are not one design. Yet the two things that have the greatest effect on boat speed and race outcome are" 1.sail area to weight ratio and 2. righting moment to sail area ratio. Both of these two basic performance parameters are highly influenced by "sailors weight". As the boats get lighter, the effect becomes greater. This is why in windsurfing contests there are weight divisions.
As beach catamarans become lighter and lighter, the effect of sailor's weight will become more pronounced because sailor's weight makes up a larger fraction of the total system weight. Maybe someday we will have weight divisions in beach cat racing but I hope not.
Bill.


By the way, I was wrong in my former post -- the three sailing classes that are Open to both men and women are Laser, 49er and Tornado. [/quote]