Mary,

I'm not going to comment yet on how these rules need to be intepretate with respect to being a member of the F16 class or not. But I'm not going to force a crew to strapped a ripped jib to there trampoline just to satisfy these rule. Same with respect to a bend spi pole. Nor am I going to prevent a crew from participating because they were unlucky to leave their jib or spi at home.

The most basic spirit of the rule is that any deviation from what is allowed as a max may no constitude an unfair increase in overall performance relative to other maximized F16's. Now we know quite well by now that anybody racing without a jib on a otherwise full compliant boat does NOT any advantage over a fully rigged sloop F16. If anything it has a noticeable disadvantage. The higher pointing simply does not make up for the loss of drive. Same for not having a spi pole and therefor not having a spi. Sure on the first upwind leg the pole less boat will have a slight advantage but after that it is "bye-bye baby" ! It will get creamed on the downwind legs and to such an extend that no amount of upwing advantage can overcome that. Ask the A-cat guys about how that feels.