Hi Warbird,

I put western red cedar timber cross ways inside my mast coated in epoxy glue. It has made the A carbon mast bullet proof, but it added some 3kg. which I needed to come up to minimum weight, with no rules for your cat, you may want to do it by a lighter method like laying extra carbon on the outside.

The mods you are talking about will probably be OK as long as you only want to have a blast upwind and beam reaching, from my experience heading downwind with that mast height and a big square top main will be difficult, if there is much wind around.

Have you sailed the standard Taipan much? They are a very fast cat as standard. Is the problem that the winds are predominatly light where you sail? The easiest way to add downwind power is a spinnaker.

A class rigs where put on 16ft. hulls many years ago, it was called a Graduate A class, it did OK but the full length A survived and the Graduate didn't. I think there is a message in this.

Regards Gary.