Actually the toe-in stiffness says alot more about the build of the hulls with respect to material. However the fact that the home-build timber hulls with a proper beam landing design can outperform the glass boats with their beam landings does suggest that Timber is not so old fashioned and nearly everybody thinks.

The simple fact that an skillful but amateur boat designer (Phill) and two amateur "gone semi professional" builders can produce a superior boat by a factor of 4 in (beam landing) stiffness when compared to the big boys says a whole lot more then nothing ! The use of low tech ply makes it all the more interesting. No high tech fibres or special new high pressure infusion proces with high end product quality. Just sheets of ply glassed over.

Lets face the music guys the, Marstrom 1992 Tornado showed no less than 2.5 times the flexing this home build boat did ! Sure old boats flex more but they don't deteriorated that much. Besides everybody claims how good Tornado's keep their stiffness over many years of sailing.

Now either Marstrom 1992 boats are [censored] (but still significant stiffer than much newer Tigers and Nacra F18's by a factor of almost 2) or the Blade boys did something very right.

Looking at the numbers I say they did something very right.

We just have to ask Marcus for the toe-in stiffness to see how much is the result of timber as the material or just the superior beamlanding design.

But no matter what the cause the platform is way stiffer than the measured competition and THAT is what you'll notice on the water. Who cares if it is cause by little gobbling insides the hulls or whatever.

Wouter