In case there is any question about what I posted, here is the exact e-mail response I got from Simon Forbes at the ISAF Secretariat:


Now, my (Mary here) concern is that nobody knows at this point which of the two boats (Hobie 16 with spinnaker or the SL 16) is going to be used in 2008 and even beyond that.

The youth sailing scene in the United States has been in limbo for the past few years since it was announced that a new multihull youth boat was going to be chosen for the ISAF Youth Worlds. Like, "Should we buy a bunch of spinnaker kits from Hobie Cat Europe for our kids to train with here on the Hobie 16? Or should we wait to see what boat is selected as the youth boat and start building a fleet of those here?"

Meanwhile, the U.S. kids are not getting the spinnaker experience that the kids in Europe have, where there are a number of youth-sized boats with spinnakers.

So maybe we should just forget about what the youth boat is going to be and figure out a way for our youth sailors to get more experience on cats with spinnakers, no matter what brand or size of boat, since it is obvious that whichever boat is used for the Worlds, a spinnaker is going to be used.

OR, we could just say, "Who cares about the ISAF Youth Worlds, since we are only sending one catamaran team?"

OR, we can at least get our kids into monohull spinnaker classes to get them the spinnaker experience, until we have enough youth spinnaker cats in this country.

It would be interesting to know whether Performance Catamarans has plans to build and get at least 20 boats on the water in the U.S. as part of working toward ISAF Recognized status for the SL 16.

The window of opportunity of racing as a "youth" is pretty small, so it would be nice if the political wheels could turn a bit more rapidly for this particular segment of the sport.