Mark, I think Stars and Stripes victory by such huge margins, over the Fay boat, did have an effect in the states. Up until then, I never considered a catamaran as anything other than a toy for reaching fast but nothing more. My total exposure to cats at that time was limited to watching a few Hobie 16's poorly sailed in light air.

After I saw what a state of the art cat could do to a state of the art mono, twice it's size, I had to find out more about cats, which eventually led me out of racing mono's and onto cats. I hope it had the same effect on many other sailors who thought the same about cats.

And all those tri's setting records across the Atlantic back in the 80's helped push me in this direction too! <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />