Your super-Taipan 5.7 looks terrific, Macca. We all look forward reports of comparisons with other boat classes. Being a proud owner of a Taipan 5.7 in Norway, a country with no race classes of Taipans, F18s or other high-tech cats, we are looking at modications of the boat. (I am also the proud father of JIMI).
My question is: Have any of you Taipan owners considered deep high-aspect daggerboards? It seems that AHPC (like Julian Bethwaite) used to prefer rectangular wide/short daggerboards for their boats. The trend during the last 5 years has been to long high-aspect boards and everyone seems to maintain that these are much more effective. Hence, the Capricorn has a foil shape which is very different from that of the Tapipans.
Of course, avoiding contact with the sea bottom is nice, but upwind effciency is king.