So basically they have revamped the (Northern France) Spitfire class.

The only real F104's at this time are the Cirrus Evolution and hobie FX-extreme, only a handful of those.

More interesting is the Mattia Esse, the are counting on 15 boats of these, but the SCHRS handicap system shows a surprising picture.

Swell Spitfire Rating 1.035
Mattia Esse rating 1.081

(F16 rating 1.008 as comparison)

According to this rating system there is a 162 second difference after a hour of bouy racing between these two designs. That is a shy 3 minutes.

According to the specs given by the SCHRS measurements the Mattia Esse is also alot more narrow then the Spitfire ; respectively 2.21 mtr to 2.55 mtr.

This version of the Mattia Esse is actually fully F16 compliant except for its 18 foot hull length (it weights 155 kg and its rig is smaller then the F16).

I'm not sure how to fit this Mattia Esse into the F104.

see the data here :

Mattia Esse : http://www.schrs.com/index.php?page=class&id=87
Swell Spitfire : http://www.schrs.com/index.php?page=class&id=137

Searching over Italian websites I found a (New?) Mattia Esse that is boosted up to a rating of 1.04, mostly by entlarging the jib area and spinnaker area. But I'm not sure how many (if any) have been sold of this version.

http://www.mattiaesse.org/int/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=3

Wouter