You're missing a couple of the cool things about Optis at least the experience we had with them. My kid could safely single hand the Opti at age 7 and 50 lbs.

At Bay Week (Put-In-Bay Ohio) where my wife and I were competing as adults, my son took his Opti out after we were done racing for the day. He would sail his Opti from the Yacht Club over to Gibralter island and back. He then started taking his kid friends out, one at a time in the Opti. That was one of the coolest, most esteem building things, I have ever seen a 7 year old do.

The most fun we have is playing ball tag, or tag, or other games like that with the Optis. Again, the cool thing is that all of the kids 7 to 13 or 14 are fairly even in the Optis. It's not how fast the boat goes it is that they are all the same.

And finally, it opens up options for breeze that a bigger boat would not. At 9 Joey went to Buffalo Canoe club for Opti midwest. The kids were out in an honest to god 18 knots of breeze gusting over 20, with 3-4 waves, and the occasional 6-7 footer coming through. It would have been pretty tough for him to handle anything bigger in those conditions at age 9 and weighing 70 lbs or so.

Now then, if it's blowing 3-4 and the water is flat the opti is not an exciting boat. But get 6 or 8 of them together to play and anything is fun. The great thing about the boat is the small size, that the kids (young kids 7 and up) can totally handle it themselves, from rigging to launching to righting.