Jerry,

It all dependents on the intended use of the boat and personal preferrence.

Most F18's and Tornado's use the cleat on mast setup now. The crew can stand up and pull harder/quicker on the halyard line. This is needed as alot of F18's have accellerated the uphaul halyard of the spi. Meaning the system is a 2:1, one meter pull on halyard raises the spi 2 meters. Most beam cleated systems I know have a 1:1 system. An additional advantage is that once the line is out of the cleat it can not recleat itself.

As a counter example : Most F16's are using the beam cleat setup for the simple reasons that that mast based cleat is very difficult to get to when you are singlehanding on the "wrong" side of the boat. This is something you really don't want. In my experience I pull the spi from either side of the boat often. Our club race manager keeps us on our toes this way. We sometimes do race the course the wrong way around or I have to gibe away at the mark to be clear of the other boats. In pure F18 races the course is always "all marks to port".

Wouter