Mark,

cat sailors will say alot of things and then don't live up to them anyway.

I focus on racing in every shape or form and that fully includes handicap racing. If never shared the One-design fetishm of the USA sailors.

In this respect I'm on the right boat as my racing scene is dominated by F18's that I can't compete on singlehanded. Even the A-cats are only a minor class overhere and more often then not get hammered by spinnaker boats as we also tend to run longer courses overhere then in the US. 45 minutes and only 2 laps is standard. This makes for sufficiently long spi legs.

So I don't buy into the zero sum game in any way or form. I'll race any nacra 17, A-cat, FX-one, F16 and F18 that cares to share a startline with the other boats. First in wins ! A long time ago I dropped the believe that anything but the nut behind the tiller makes a significant impact on the end result.

I believe the differences in speed between A's, nacra 17's, F16's and what not are relatively small and therefor easily overcome by very small differences in sailor skills. So I give alot more attention to other points of a design. Like practicality, feel of sailing etc.

Wouter