I don't think it is gouging or an elite club. The volume of A Class boats sold each year is not large. To produce these boats in production, you need molds for the hulls, rudder blades, daggerboards, rudder heads, and probably more items. This is not counting the molds used for the autoclaved masts, as these items are usually purchased by the factory (for those that buy a complete boat) or the owner (if they want something different from the stock mast). Once you have the mast out of the autoclave, then there is the materials and assembly to get you spreaders (Proctor) and diamond wires (Dyform) and the internal downhaul and the blocks and cleats for the rotator and then pay to have someone do all the assembly of the mast. Then there are the materials used like beams, curved traveler, blocks, line, hiking stick, tiller connector, trampoline and other hardware. Don't forget that you have all the labor and materials to make the carbon hulls, boards, rudders, rudder heads, assemble all the hardware to the boat and then package everything to ship it to a customer. There is the cost of the sail to be added.

Most of this is done on all catamarans, but with different materials, however, all the fixed costs need to be spread over a much lower volume of boats sold. Also, volume of any design drops when the next winning design is unveiled. In the end, someone needs to invest a great deal to get the first boat to a regatta. The time delay from first investing in a design to producing saleable boats is significant.

In the business world, A Class boat building would fall near the bottom of the list of things you would invest your money in. It is surprising we have any choice at all!

That is how I look at it.