The secret to all these questions really is : have the sails cut to suit your weight.

Personally I'm a little cheap and I have only one mainsail that was optimized for 150 kg's. Doublehanded I sail between 145 and 150 kg.

Halve the time I sail and race singlehanded at 87 kg (190 lbs); I use the 150 kg mainsail then and the controls do allow me to depower the rig sufficiently. I'm very comfortable with this sail even though I know that I could be a little faster with a specilized singlehander sail. But I don't really feel I need it as in the really serious races I only sail doublehanded. In my club races I sail often singlehanded and here depowering doesn't hurt me too much at all. I sail a Taipan F16 myself.

Last weekend a fellow club member sailed his Blade F16 solo in over 14 knots of wind and his comments were: "derotating the mast a little, some more downhaul and letting a little mainsheet out was enough to fine tune the boat to comfortable singlehanded sailing. He is 72 kg himself 159 lbs and he uses a doublehanded mainsail as well (I think his is cut for 135 kg combined crew weight). So we are both depowering to the same extend when we are singlehanding.

Back to your case. At 103 kg it only becomes more easy. You have to depower less if you get a standard mainsail.

In the way of flotation (platform and hulls) I think either platform will be fine; if not well suited to your weight. It is my personal conviction that the F16's become the prefered singlehanders when going up to your crew weight. The hulls of commericially available A-cats are really designed around a difference average crewweight about 80 kg or so. When you reach 100 kg skipper weight you are going to notice this difference. The F16's are of course designed for higher (combined) average crew weights and therefor will not at all sink in to deep when sailed heavy as a solo skipper. Other singlehander classes force you to buy standard sails that are optimized around 80 kg as well. Here we must remember that it is always alot more easy to depower a sail then it is to power it up. F16's allow custom sails by any sailmaker and standard sails are cut for a heavier weight then you are now. So you can hardly go wrong there. With a One-Design "one-size-fits-all" mainsail optimized around 80 kg you'll always be lacking power in a competitive sense.

Personally I won't think twice about solo sailing a F16 at 103 kg. I think it to be the better class for those heavy solo sailors. If you want to take somebody along now and then then choose the Blade or Stealth as those are the most weight acceptant of the F16's.

Wouter