Hi Les

That may be the guideline by the class but it does not have a great deal of buy in by the sailors. For example when sailors registered on line for Tradewinds... they used every combination of the alphabet to brand their boat!

Likewise, sailors puzzled out the data from the NAF18 nationals. It seems kind of silly.

Is this F18 rule historic and given the now world wide acceptance of the rule, no longer serves a valid purpose?

An argument in favor of the rule is "Well it focuses attention on the sailors and not the boat" is simply a matter of perpective... Great focus if you know the sailors... irrelevant focus if you don't. Publishing all relevent contextual info allows the reader to choose the focus.