The Girth rule clearly defines what is regarded to be a spinnaker which head sails are nothing more than very large jibs.

To give ane example. Lets say we fit a hooter or rather a reacher to a uni rigged boat. As jibs and Reachers are not celarly defined under the Portsmouth system I can choose to use the lower modification factor of a reacher for my very large jib. Okay I will get into a big argument with the race organisors but what is there to prevent me from declaring my reacher to be nothing more than a large jib

US sailing definition of small jib :

"boats with standard jib tacked to bridal wires and hoisted to or below mast hounds"

US sailing definition of a large jib :

"boats with foils or jibs with tack attached to the deck or from cross beam and/or head attached above mast hounds"

Now my reacher is not fitted to either a deck or crossbeam nor does it really need to be hoisted below or to the mast hound. I will just fit a piece of dyneema line as a make beleive forestay while my reacher luff is actually taken the true loads.

This way it will not be difficult to fit my uni rigged boat in theory with a "reacher" by fitting what actually is an oversized jib hoisted only 2 inches above the mast hounds. I fly this baby both upwind and downwind and only have to take a 2,9 % hit instead of 6,3 % hit for a large jib.

This way I can easily design a rating beater by introducing alot more performance than I get compensated for in the rating. And this is exactly why Texel and ISAF systems hold onto their definitions and regard 0-75 % girth headsails as jibs.

In fact it is more fair this way.

Now with regard to the Texel and ISAF hits, well a beach cat doesn't sail well with a 10 sq. mtr. (100 sa. mtr.) jib. This is just poor designing. The rig is out of balance. Texel and ISAF don't care wether you build your hulls like a rectangular brick they just state the maximum expected performance for a given waterlength, weight, sailarea, crewweight and sailplan. That some designers try to do the equivalent of fitting Nascar 600 hp engine to a Ford Pinto platform and not account for the inbalances is just considered bad designing. You have all the ingredients to go fast, lightweight, small surface area and a huge engine but other aspects are preventing you from obtaining that performance. Things like drive (fragile) shafts when you put 600 HP through it.

Now in theory a 10 sq. mtr. jib can add alot of extra performance. The practical implication is however that such a jib is out of place on our small beach cats.

Is this fair, well one can argue convincingly that even bad designs need to be rated accurately and I agree with that. This is a drawback ot the texel system.

On the other hand however I agree with the Texel and ISAF systems that we don't make this system more fair by knowingly give a superlarge jib (but deceivingly called a reacher) a slower rating than it is known to be able to sail to.

I mean the spinnaker hit is determined on the fact that it is carried only on downwind courses. Now imagine carrying the same sail upwind. Clearly the basis on which the modification factor is determined has no been lost.

I for one would stress for a different modification factor which is to be used for reachers (hooters) that would solve all our problems.

With respect to the Tornado, I'm sure the guys at texel would not give the standard int. Tornado rating to that boat. Class rules will not help the Tornado with reacher in this respect. And Again that would be fair I think. However, more fair would be to have a reacher modification.

I'm also sure that you would win an appeal in the US as the PN system definitions allow you to use the more favourable modification factor.

With respect to F16 class rules; we will not take out the Girth rule as neither the F18, iF20 (inter 20) and also the F18HT class rules have this rule in them.

Maurizio is once again mistaken by saying that Bim could fit hooters or reachers to their jav 2's.

Under F18HT rules they can't.

I quote rule 2 of the F18HTclass website "... Spinnaker must satisfy the following SMG >75 %* SF ..."

Now I welcome anybody who is willing to experiment with these sails to do so and hopefully they will share their info with me.

Some already have and I must say these experiences were very interesting.

With respect to popularity in Europe of these sails. Well they are widely used on ocean going designs like the ORMA tri's.

With respect to beach cats. I may be able to table this issue in the Texel committee, but for now a reacher is not what you want to have when you sail in abig event like Texel or Carnac.

Wouter