Seeing as our masts are the primary reason for this discussion I thought itt time that I add my opinion to the melting pot.
First as you may guess I am in favour of abolishing the tip weight as a measurement.
Carbon mast have not been seen in mainstream catamaran classes until now, it is not realistic to say how light a durable mast can be made at this point, I can tell you that they can be considerably lighter than aluminium and still stronger.
We are a developement class and part and parcel of this type of rule is that boats are allowed to get better and better. However it is controlled improvement in as much as the main performance enhancing parameters are defined.
Hull drag by limiting length and minimum weight
Sail power by limiting dimension of sails
Access to sail power by limiting width.
With these dimensions fixed, any improvments made will be in small increments, I don't believe that any-one will come up with anything that will overnight make all other boats obsolete, but the strength of the concept is that over a long period the boat will get faster and easier to use, the old boats may become outdated but the class will not become obsolete, we can expect evolution not revolution.
So how will the mast tip issue impact on the class, in the short term not a great deal, the majority of catamarans have aluminium masts with greater tip weights than ours, we are ahead of them.
However carbon masts are coming to mass catamaran sailing, all the major spar manufacturers are investing heavily in carbon technology, the price is coming down and will continue to come down, alumium masts on seriuos racing boats will eventually go the same way that wooden ones went.
Already there is little difference in the price of carbon and aluminium masts.
Lighter mast tips will offer these improvements
Easier to raise the mast
Easier to right a capsized boat.
Slightly faster upwind in chop.
No-one will have a problem with the first 2 points the only issue is the third.
The increase in speed we are talikng about is very difiicult to measure and is certainly a fraction of a %.
To be honest if we are worried about this we should worry about other things effecting rig weight Cuben fibre sails would save as much, aramid rigging some more should we limit sail cloth weight and rigging weight, or should we do what we are aklready doing and say, when the price of this technology becomes affordable I'll have it.
Well carbon masts are affordable, you can have them now.
Mast makers need to be given the freedom to find out how light a DURABLE mast can be made after all we only want to give you our potential customers a better easier to use product can that be bad.
Aluminium masts could be made lighter than they currently are, but spar manufacturers have found the safe limit to go to, and we have reliable masts, they will adopt the same approach with using carbon as a material.
if we leave the tip weight in then any light masts will have to have lead on them just like the old Tornado masts did, and just like any light boat must add lead.
But remember this is about the distribution of the weight on the boat, all boats will still weigh the same.
