Hi Wouter

The mast change was sold to the class for the follwing reason. At the Olympic level, well funded teams or consortia were beginning to spend huge sums developing alu masts that were not made available to the rest of the olympic fleet. The arms race in sticks and sails was going to get out of control and threatened to make the class unaffordable. This fact could threaten the class's olympic status. Since masts are generally not viewed as disposable items the decision was made to make to lockin a one design carbon mast and not have every team develop their own custom carbon mast. (They did this with hull and foil shapes a few years ago) I guess time will tell if one design carbon masts only work for a narrow crew weight. The alu masts are still legal (I think).