Not to sound defensive, but the addition of canted hulls, foils or any other "gee-whiz" gadgets being discussed here would have in no way affected the outcome of these past races for us.

You guys need to be having a few beers with this thread or maybe something more hallucinogenic. There is nothing revolutionary in what is being dicussed. As evidenced in the A class and F18s, it is the crew winning the events not the boats. Tigers are out-dated, yes, but still are capable of winning events, same with Marstrom A-cats.

1)Hull shapes are all trade-offs. The new trend in shape popularized with the Flyer is no faster than a well done older style design. They are easier to sail not necessarily faster.

2)Wing-masts, as pointed out earlier between the Taipans and Blades as compared to the Tear-drop Stealths, show no real performance advantage either. Theoretically, they provide better flow and more tune-ability in the rig, but they are much harder to tune correctly.

3) The Blade or Taipan would theoretically sail better with high aspect boards. With the low aspect boards they are put down when we leave the beach and never worried about again. For me, the less I have to do the more I can concentrate on the race..i.e. they're faster.

4) I have raced canted board and hulls and I don't know if they are any faster, but I do know that the boat is much more difficult to control on a start line. Mess up the start and they had better be faster by an order of magnitude to make a difference.

I do not mean to knock any discussion meant in fun, as this would be a cool home project, but a lot of people spend more time fussing over fine adjustments to something that has no effect on what they are trying to achieve.

Matt