to save the reputation of the taipan (we were not sailing my boat that day, but the one of my friend (who wanted to learn spi-sailing which was the reason we left the jib at home to give him more overview and clearance what the spi is doing)), while it looked that he was using the same mast setup as me, sunday I measured his rake again and it became obvious that it was much to less (10 cm BEFORE the aft beam instead of 10 cm behind!). when changing this crucial setup for sailing on sunday (we had less wind in the gusts)already we could feel a much better balanced boat with much less nosediving tendencies. still I believe more modern designs (which are well balanced (ex. hobies fx one as well as bimares javelin are good examples of how not to do it! ) which put the volume in front of the frontbeam AND below the waterline have surely a significant better behaviour in those conditions.

regarding the 'flexcat'-issue, I think it first depends to which boat you relate it to... a glued beam full carbon A-cat (and surely the nowadays new generations like the new 2005 a+e flyer or bimares carbon jx and specially bunkenburgs honeycomb nikita) offer a much stiffer less torsioning platform compared to the 25 kg 60 cm shorter but also several years older glassfibre taipans 4.9 where its aft beam seams already to be a big part allowing it. (the frontbeam is also a bad profile for handling torsion moments)

but furthermore I really discovered that the outside screws of the aftbeam started to untight themselves... which is a little scaring... and of cours a reason for much more movement of the platform. how hard do you tighten them?

in principal you already can test the torsionstiffness of a platform on land when the platform is lying on a plane surface with the afts supported and than you lift one bow and watch how many cm you have to lift it till the other bow is moving up also. surely forces with one or two crews are much different but a platform already not very convincing in this simple platform test will not impress you later...