The Moths spent considerable time and money developing their system and very good it it too. It's also not Cheap.
As this development was going on, the 3 moth sailors I know all said "I'll never go foiling, I cannot afford it". 18 months later they were foiling as "I had no choice, the class was going that way and the non foiling boats were dieing". I consider this is the risk we take with the F16 class - we may end up with 2 types of F16; those that use variable trimm and those that do not.
The are now very few foiling Moths sailing sailing in events and they are NOT competitive in wind over 7 kts This may happen to the F16 class.
As John says, the F16GC could ban these boats retrospectively. Do we want to do this ?
From what I can gather, if a vote was taken to ban variable trim rudders it would probably not pass. The class as a whole needs to understand the implications of this. People who way "lets see what happen" I can understand, I am just wanting people to understand the potential for this system.
(I have one designed that would be automatic for sailing up wind and require "setting once" for a downwind leg). If I win the lottery I would develop this. I believe that the possible banning under the "spirit of the rule" gives the class a "get-out-of-jail" free card that may well prevent anyone taking the risk.)
People above have expressed worries about who we could attract to the class with the proposed change to the tip weight rule. We are activly PREVENTING people from taking part as they cannot right the boat single handed.
