The A-class has been evolving slowly during 30 years of development. If you are racing at top level with a boat you seldom have a boat that is older than five years, and a five year old A-cat is quite ok to race with. But the ban against foils was made because we thought that this would give a big jump in performance and make the whole fleet obsolete!

If you check all the changes Wouter was talking about none of them gave this jump in performance that foils may give.

Carbon masts. They gave more speed after a while. Compare with the Tornado, the carbon mast Tornado is not superior in boat speed yet.

Glued beams will NOT give you more boat speed, but it will reduce the cost (1000 euros) and weight of the boat (4 kg). But if you are on minimum weight with bolted beams you can either add weights or more material to the boat to get it back to minimum weight.

Wave piercer hull shape. This may be faster is some conditions but traditional designs can still win. The german Nationals last year was won with a none wave piercer design. At the Eurpoeans in Travemuende we had four none wave piercer in the top ten after a few races.

The sail shape is changing every year. No bigger changes so you can still be racing with older designs.

Mast height was up at 10 meters several years ago but then they discovered that a shorter mast was better so now we are down at 9-9.5 meters again.

Tilted rigs has been tested but they showed no big improvement in speed.

Speed comparision with F18: Yes I know what I'm talking about since we have 20 F18 in Sweden right now and I have raced against them in several races (upwind-downwind races in flat water conditions). But as other people stated here the speed compared to other catamarans is not the main reason to start to sail A-cat.

/hakan