Warning: This is going to be a long post.
Since I'm the one who started this thread, I guess I should clarify what I consider to be one-design. And for the purpose of my analysis, I am assuming that all of the crews are of equal sailing ability.
To me, the truest form of one-design is that which makes the combination of boat and crew as closely equal as possible to all the other combination boat/crews, while all using the same platform design. The best way to accomplish this is with multiple manufacturers for the basic boat and with sailors allowed to purchase sails, running rigging and standing rigging from whatever manufacturer they wish. The ability to have sails custom built (flat, medium or full) for the crew weight is the number one most important factor in achieving equality on the race course. The Tornado is the best catamaran example of a perfect one-design, but many monohulls fall into this category.
Next best is single-manufacturer one-design for the basic boat, but that allows you to purchase sails, running rigging, and standing rigging from whatever manufacturer you wish. Again, sails are the great equalizer. Even with (or sometimes especially with) a single manufacturer, there can be considerable differences in boat weights. The only way to compensate for these variations (in addition to crew weight variations) is with the sails.
Third best is single-manufacturer one-design where ALL the components of the boat, including sails, must be purchased from the manufacturer and must be identical. This is not true one-design, in my opinion, because it takes the crew out of the equation. Only the boats and their “engines” are all (theoretically) equal. However, despite its flaws, SMOD seems to be very effective as far as getting one-design racing fleets going. E.g., Hobie in yesteryear and Vanguard at present.
Fourth best is formula racing, and it obviously is working very well. It has helped to revitalize the sailing industry a bit because it gets more manufacturers and designers and sailmakers involved.
However, formula racing has a couple of problems:
One is that most formulas have maximums and minimums, and a bunch of different boats can fit into that formula. For example, the Hobie Wave is an A-Class cat, so I presume that I could sail in an A-Class Regatta if I wanted to. And both the Hobie 16 and the Tornado were originally designed to fit within the old ISAF B-Class, which no longer exists. Both of these cases sound ridiculous, of course, but if all the boats that fit into a certain formula class would show up to race, it would be a very eclectic bunch. Sure, the slower boats probably would not win, and would probably hold up the racing timewise, but they would at least have a venue where they could race boat-for-boat just for fun if they wanted to. It may not be the spirit and intent of the formula class, but it is certainly something that can happen unless they close up the “box” formula.
Another problem with formula is that some designer is always coming up with a newer and faster platform. If the people who buy it dominate the class, either everybody else in the class dumps their boat and buys the new one, or the class dies. (It’s a lot cheaper to buy a new sail, as in a one-design class, than to buy a whole new boat.) When a Formula 20 class was just trying to get off the ground in Europe at least 10 years ago, it immediately died because Morrelli & Melvin came out with the Ventilo. I cant’t remember whether it was Pete or Gino who told me they felt bad about having destroyed the class because their boat was so much faster than all the others in that class. Everybody else just gave up. If everybody in a formula class decides to get the same brand of boat, then you are back to pure one-design. So it is almost like a formula class is just a sort of survival-of-the-fittest contest, leading back to one-design. (Maybe that has not happened in Europe, and that is where the Formula 18 has succeeded very well. But it certainly COULD happen.)
Fifth best is handicap racing, which is a completely different kind of racing. The best that I can say for it is that at least it gets a bunch of boats together going around the same course at the same time, which is more fun than going around a course by yourself and then doing it again to try to improve on the time, which is what record-seekers like Steve Fossett do. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to sail as fast as you can and having fun doing it. It eliminates tactics, but at least you still have strategy. And if you really work at shaving minutes and then seconds off your time around the race course, you WILL improve your skills. But for most sailors, I don’t think a ticking clock is as good a motivator or pumps up your adrenalin as much as another sailor right on your hip trying to pass you or the guy 30 feet below and ahead of you whom you might be able to beat if he is going to the wrong end of the finish line.
