Hi,
My name is Jay Glaser and I am a member of the F18 TechCom so I must be a muppet. Thanks for that Macca.

This post is my opinion not that of the class.

I sail an blue Infusion with my wife Pease. (see us on the cover of Helge Sach's new cat book) Before that we sailed a Capricorn. Before that a Tcat.
I also have a really cool Guck A4 which I don't sail nearly enough.
I have been built a few (1000) catamaran sails in the past 40yrs (in 1973 sails from the loft where I was working won the Toronto Tornado Worlds). I guess this means I am really old.
I currently own an extremely small loft in SoCal and am not connected to any of the big boat builders.
I have spent some time out sailing around as well as crawling around a loft floor.

Here is my opinion.

The cloth list came from developments in the Tornado class for the 2004 Athens Games. Some of the teams came up with a cloth that was within the rule but was perceived to be expensive and fragile (Cuben Fiber). Other teams with a lot of resources had special cloth manufactured exclusively for their use (2Xply Pen).
Both of these situations were thought to be bad for the continuing health of the class so along with the F18 class the cloth list was born by asking the main sailmakers in the classes what they were mostly using.
The list has worked pretty much as hoped with cloths added as things changed. I think that the class members don't feel that anyone can get an advantage from using a special "unobtainium" cloth.
Over a year ago the was some discussion about the list and the need to update it. Some of the cloths on the list are no longer in production and there were other cloths that both cloth and sail manufacturers thought should be added.
There was also input from class measurers who that the list was too large.
Last year I started asking the main cloth manufacturers about the current and future availability of cloths on the list.
Armed with that information a decision to par down the cloth list was made.
There are plenty of arguments out there about what does and doesn't work but I made my own decision (3mil PE only for M&J 3/4 nylon for spi) based on what I thought the teams pushing off the beach trying to get into the top half of silver fleet might want not the guys going for a WC podium spot. Talking to those guys I think they enjoy the steady development in the class. Great to have self tacking jibs, spinnaker launchers, better hull designs, modern fat head mains etc but I think you would see a decline in numbers if they felt they needed to buy a new set of sails every year because they thought theirs were blown out or not out of the cool new thing. They can still get class legal sails from any loft designed for their weight and sailing conditions. The lofts can get cloth from at least 4 different manufacturers. The market is still free but by operating in a more narrow confine hopefully the perception is the sailor makes the difference and not so much the sails or the boat. We also avoid the pitfalls of the Builders classes where sailors buy lots of "identical" product looking for a small advantage.

And it is all about perception because going back to the beginning the Cuben sails were not fragile or more expensive but that idea was promoted by the teams that had it to achieve a small psych advantage. The "unobtainium" factor.

The tech com is working on a defined path for getting new cloth on the list but it is not as easy as it sounds. As the class grows there are increasing commercial pressures we need to take into account as well as responsibility to the current owners who have invested in the class.

I would like to thank Olivier Bovyn and Don Findlay for their continued hard work on behalf of the class. Without them (and many unnamed others) we would not have the chance to sail in great places with such large numbers of our friends. We need to remember those who built the sandbox we all have so much fun playing in.
Sorry about the long post.
Jay Glaser