Dude, seriously. Because I said "that crowd" does not mean I don't want to sail with them or consider them any differently than I do Randy Smyth, Woody Cope, Ben Hall, Ian Lindall, Phil Kinder, Lars Guck, etc or feel like they would have a negative impact on the fleet. I look forward to sailing against high level competition and this is part of the reason I sail an a-cat. If I was that freaked out by someone that paid some outfit to refare their hull straight from the factory or re-rig the entire boat to their liking I would have quit racing in a fleet with Alex Shafer or David Lennard a long time ago. I sure as hell would be freaked out by campaigning an 11 year old A-cat.

If someone spent 30 hours a week training on the water for a year I wouldn't get bent out of shape that they spent $5,000 or $10,000 working on their hull if they beat me. You act like you are all bidding for a national title and this will affect your income and standard of living. I race because it is challenging and it does not become less so when the level of competition increases.

Hypothetically, if the Hobie 16 were to become an Olympic class, what kind of changes would you expect to see to the class? I would expect that the build quality and consistency would improve on new stuff and who would complain about that? (I'm not saying anything bad about Hobie - all manufacturers have areas they can improve quality and consistency). OK, so cost would increase...what else? So what would change in your class?