We are just following the lessons learned from the Optimist class. They had to change into a very strict one design due to pissing contests between parents trying to buy an edge to their kids and raising costs exponentially in the process. One of our goals is that low price homebuilt cats remain competitive against more expensive serial production boats.




This is voluntary work and it is impossible to force anyone to do or not to do anything. It is ok to develop four similar boats around a core concept, test them and then decide what works best for a OD class.

If a given design also succeeds by its own merits, it means that it is a good design and more of its features should be used in the group's project. In the end, the more successfull a design results, the more it competes with this project - but the greater its contribution to the project's success as well. Fair enough?

Internal competition should not be a problem if we do our work well. The combined work of four designers should result in a better selling boat than the four originl boats. Maybe not in each designer's influence area, but certainly in the global market, which is our goal.

What I do worry about is the possibility that big manufacturers refuse to support the class and use the work published here to develop their own youth cat. We must protect the project from this risk.

The final class rules discussion and definition (or vote) can be done by email to keep the data non-public. At that time we should have the class association runing to register the rights as its property. Afterwards it will be safe to offer the plans for serial production in large companies.