When both boats reach the finish line at the same time then they are both "oranges" (or "apples", whatever you prefer).

The rest of the argument is about which one does so more efficiently.


60-75 days per mainsail ? That would be 2 or 3 seasons in my book.
30 days for a jib may well have been true for the old overlapping kind made of dacron, but the selftackers seem to last alot longer in my opinion. Partly because they can now be made out of pentex too because there is no more flapping about etc. With respect to jib loads, I'm not seeing much degrading of the shape because of it. I honestly feel that the new jib setups are much more stable then the older ones. The spinnaker sail is most definately the one that ends it competitive life much sooner then the others, but then again they do last. So you trick to using only the old spi in basic training and the new one for racing will cut down on the related costs.

But my basic point was ofcourse that all the savings one can make on the sails when one sails an A-cat are meaningless when just getting the boat itself will cost you many times more. That difference needs to be won back first before "cheap sails" will start to favour the A.





We all know that the F16 DPN is bogus. In the rest of the world we are sailing of the F18 handicap or just 1% away from it. ONLY US DPN thinks this needs to be 7% slower then the F18's. I'm not wasting anymore breath on that issue.

Personally I can buy a new Hobie 16 with spi for about 14.500 Euro's, for the same price I can also get any of the F16's. I don't know why the Hobie 16's are so much more cheaper in the USA, but I know that they are.





Perfectly, like SurfCity said :"Isn't diversity great!"




I think having so many sails for one boat type is a little bit silly. Even if it is a sloop with spinnaker boat. This means that you had 3 suits of sails (mainsail, jib, spinnaker) in only 4 years of sailing. Why would you need 3 mainsails on this boat when you suddenly can make do with only 2 mainsails on the A-cat in the same timespan ? Do mainsails wear down quicker on a spinnaker boat ? By the same token a singlehanded F16 will not need any jibs and so we can strike those from the listing altogether.

Personally I feel too many people concentrate too much on getting new sails and too little on getting their "old" sails to work well. Also I feel that 90 % of the sailors out there are not held back by having old sails but rather by having insufficient sailing skills. For them it will hardly make a difference if they buy a new suit of sail every 2 years. For truly competitive sailors getting new sails often is significant, but then again they need to buy a new boat every 3 years as well, did we included that in the calculation ?

Now I'm not taking anything away from the A-cats with exception of some eyebrow raising claims.






Yes there is and it is not said that this is in favour of the 165 lbs boat and visa versa ! Different boats for different people and that is what you proved by your listing ones again.


Wouter