We have to be careful. I do think that moving to the new sail plan could be a class killer. There are very few of us that campaign our boats actively. There are a lot more people that sail in 2-3 local regattas a year. They might have a 3 year old main but as little as they sail it's still just fine.

These are the people that we could drive out of the class. They aren't willing to spend $1850 on a new main or 3500 on a new set of sails for 2-3 regattas. They also are not willing to go to a regatta and be uncompetitive. So we basically run the risk of losing these people. These folks won't be competitive in a year anyway.

It's very easy to piss people off. Those people will move classes if they feel like they are outgunned or out spent by other teams. What class are they going to spend less in that's a viable class?

I'm in the middle. I think a nice staged and announced course of action would be good. We have to have a proposal and a vote. This would ensure that we all are heard. Also we don't want a vote with 4 options. Only 2 options at a time so we don't have split vote issues.

I don't want to see the sails opened up for many reasons.
1. The factory won't support it so we now are responsible to hold our own Nationals separate from the factory. This would not work with too few boats. We have to be included with the other boats to make the numbers work for a Nationals.What does the factory do now, besides give a little cash to the host club?
2. We bring in the fact that money can buy wins with newly designed sails that are faster.I want to be faster, don't you?
3. We drive the weekend sailors out of the class because it's too expensive to compete on a level playing field. I reiterate they probably weren't competitive to begin with.
4. We don't have anybody with the time or ability to measure all of these sails. It took the F18 years to get measurement in place and it's still hard to pull off. We do and we can, it's a matter of whether the class as a whole is too lazy to do anything about it.

I think we need to have a small group of three people (bouy, distance, Weekend) to hash out a plan talking among themselves then have someone talk to the factory and
Skip to come up with a plan. After coming up with an exact plan they should put it to a vote for the boat owners. This has already happened with ONE person,Trey, (I applaud his effort) and he has a plan. I think all owners should be involved ,hence the google group to try and keep everyone in the loop.

But you still run the risk of splintering the class.