Wow - Darren, thanks for offering your perspective. Nice to hear from a major-leaguer.

I realize that EU and AUS are quite a bit ahead of the US in F18, but thus far we have seen the opposite of what you're contending. The smaller sail plan has been very competitive (3rd at Nationals) and has gotten teams on the water (youth and women) that wouldn't have been able to get out there otherwise. I wonder if perhaps the Gold Fleet make-up you're talking about might be more attributable to the teams rather than the larger sail size - it seems to me that most of those guys were already successful in other classes where a bit of beef was necessary. How many of the specific teams carrying the small sails at the event could have been realistically expected to have made Gold anyway? In otherwords, who do you think would have made the cut if they had not had the small sailplan?

Anyway, I guess at this point in the development of F18 in the US, the small sailplan is working. When the issue was discussed within the class here, I seem to remember overwhelming support to keep the small sailplan in the formula.

Thanks again for posting - we need more folks like you to drop in here to talk about what is going on in the front of the fleet.