I am not sure which version DVD you have of the Alpha sailing, I have added video over time to the original as more has become available and in the current version there is a 5 to 7 minute chapter at the end with two Alpha F14's sailing together in about 18 to 20 knots of wind showing some extremely fast driving reaches. On that day there were 4 different sailers on the cats in the different shots (one flew in from Denmark to stay with us over Christmas purposely to sail the Alpha, as well as get away from the snow in Europe), the lightest one sailing weighed 73kgs and the heaviest was 107 Kgs, the Alpha didn't seem to notice any difference between any of their weights. We are racing two F14’s against each other at the same club here with one of the guys at 105kgs and the other at 80kgs and over this season so far their finish results have been evenly split.
Your right with the frequency of use, when you want to go sailing you just go, no waiting for a crew, no problem towing it, you just hook it to the car and often forget that you have it in tow due to it's lightness and ease of towing (and I don’t really notice any difference in fuel consumption either and that’s often at 100 km/hr behind a RAV 4 on a 500 Km round trip), and when you rig it and derig it, it isn't the "work" that a larger cat is, I never thought that I would say this about any boat but, it is actually a pleasure packing it up at the end of the day.
Although it may not be completely apparent from the photos and video, the hulls are not compatible to convert to timber, the radii of the curves just can't be duplicated in ply (mores the pity) but we have no problem supplying hulls only to some one building their own F14 based on our hulls, after all the most critical part of the performance is firstly in the hull form.
(By the way, the "straw poll" doesn't seem to work, it only shows that "you didn't vote for anything" otherwise I would have obiously voted in the affirmative!!!)