I've recently been reading Frank Bethwaite's book "High Performance Sailing" which brought my attention to 18footers and related "apparent wind" monos. Turns out they've got a big regatta going on this week in Sydney Harbor. If you've got an hour to kill, today's sailing was pretty awesome. Link
here. Check the middle of the 3 videos.
The tactics of this style of racing is so similar to ours. I think the pissing contest is all wrong - its not a question of monos versus cats, its slow boats versus fast ones.
I'll tell ya though, I'd much rather be parked between races on a cat than one of these guys any day