Ahhh, the great debate, and the often heard excuse "is not "rule efficient".

Tell me Luiz (and forgive me for contininuing with me cynical tone) how does one seperate brute force solutions from creative solutions if no limits are set ?

I mean without any limits Club Med, Playstation, Kersausons Tri geronimo and a whole lot of other boats would simply blow away all of the ARC cats right ? Would that mean that the are superior in design to the ARC designs ?

No true creativity is found in limiting rule systems like A-class, and to some extend F18 class. Here there is no easy way of the brute force methode, just the path of refinement.

The flyer A-cat design was able to to make a mark in the A-cat class under the given conditions. Spinnaker shapes development jumped in the F18 class. Anyone with a model 95 spi will be blow away by new spi designs. In open classes they would just have grown bigger not more refined.

To look more closely at your bow example. If a straight bow is better for a given maximum length of hull than when will a non straight bow be better than a straight bow ? Think about it, if it is faster for a given length than what is holding it designers back from using it in their designs. If the max length is holding it back than by the same measure the maximum lenght is ALSO holding back the straight bow.

Same applies to sloop rigs, If the jib is such a aerodynamical bad thing than why haven't both the tornado class and F18 class evolved into uni-rigs with just the mainsail of maximum size ? I mean there are not rules prevent crews from sailing with less sails than allowed ?

The only answer is that the used setups are faster. Maybe not very much faster but faster nevertheless than their round bow and uni-rig alternatives. Now some will argue that when you place the jib area into the main that you'll have a better boat. But then I answer that when I fit a jib to this new setup I will even be faster then the one without a jib.

Don't you see that this is just a theme that can be repeated indefinately when there are nor rules ? However it doesn't really change the basic conditions underlying the performance. What is better under limits will be better when scaled up or down.

Think about it.

only resently the A-cat banned hydrofoils, but this happened without any design with foils proving to be faster. Some classes still do allow hydrofoils and we'll just have to see wether foiled designs are faster in these classes.

Wouter