Welcome to the club Stephen,

Lets be by gones be by gones, agreed ?

You really should take Phill up on his offer for a talk and test sail.

With respect to weights I had a new experience today.

I had to get some welding done on a class 5 landyacht I'm rebuilding and the EU importer for VWM F16's helped me out.

I saw this new daggerboard design there and I really liked the new grey colouring, goes really well with the white hulls. He then asked if I wanted to see something impressive. Sure ! I said.

So he took this high aspect daggerboard (aspect ratio of 4 and less then 1.80 kg overall weight) and clamped it to low laying workbench, then he said ;"go stand on the very tip and jump up and down". Now I'm 94 kg myself (207 lbs), that is excluding my shoes and cloths. I did but felt not secure enough to really give it a go. Then he himself showed me what I was supposed to do and I could see his 100 kg frame bounce up and down by more then 6 inches on the very tip of the board. I didn't hear any noises coming of the board, it just took this punishment in its stride.

Afterwards I held the daggerboard and it is indeed ludicrously light, straight and in one piece. I felt like I was holding a milkcarton in my hand.

He is thinking about making a test setup for potential buyers so they can do this test themselves.

I know the daggerboards can see some very high loading while sailing, but this is still a very impressive test. It would require a fully powered F16 (150 on traps) and a 2G corner to even match this loading.

Wouter