It must be noted that Hollywood Goes Tiger is a retrofitted skiff moth and came 6th at the last nationals. I can recall that 8th place overall was sometimes lapped on its second lap by Rohan and the 2nd and 3rd placed boats in a 3 lap, 20-25min race.
The moths have a problem with speed differences throughout the fleet. At the last nationals, 1st-3rd would complete 3 laps while last place would sometimes not even complete 1 lap! They do finishes similar to car races, everyone crosses the finish line every lap and you are finished the next time you cross after the race is won.
This is to illustrate that there is a huge performance difference between the top foiler moth sailors and the rest. Handicaps are fairly useless for a class going through such major change, as are claims of being faster than any other class...
That particular Moth may not have been the best in the world, however neither was the F18 (myself) or the 18.
Straight line speed on the upwind and the VMGs on the down wind..... The F18 was quicker than the foiling Moth and 18 Skiff......Noticeably. The 18 had slightly better VMG downwind only in the realy light stuff when we were forced to go wild. That is straight line speed baring mistakes.
When Rowan (World Champ at the time) beat some A Class cats in Vic a few years ago around the cans..... Where were the Worlds best A sailors such as Gashby. Compare apples with apples. I have beaten Marstrom Tornadoes on my F18 but would be a fool to say the F18 is quicker than a Tornado.
Once again, those comments are Bladerider marketing BS and should be taken that way.
Did a cat/mono regatta about 18 months ago in the UK where I absolutely froze. Don't plan to be that stupid again.
But I crewed on a F18 then, and there were 4 foiler moths there. If the foiler moth could ever get to a situation where they were on the foils and could stay that way for more than a 100m, yes they were quick. But they had to drive a lot deeper angles upwind to get to that situation, so giving away a lot of ground initially before they could match speed or even be a little faster.
So around the cans they weren't close to the F18s in any stretch of the imagination. But I do admit they were not top moth sailors, but neither was my skipper at that time in the F18 fleet.
I think that foiler moths are fantastic, but horses for courses. W/L's then they are going to struggle. Triangle courses they will be able to eke some gains, but the last time I did a triangle was over 3 years in Kurnell, Aus.
