This discussion is quickly becoming as relevant and interesting as the Drill baby thread.
Multi’s are not even back in the picture yet and sailing general looks to tentative at best.

No matter the boat (or sport) there will be some optimum body weight/shape that eventually becomes gospel. The result is due as much from the actual physics as it is from the competitor psychology.

The reality is on any given day with the conditions the very top level guys may have an extremely small advantage over the other top level teams due to fitting the environment that day. If it changes one of the other teams may better fit the next day. This may, at the highest level, help determine some pecking order. Once you move down in the ranks from the very top, any small advantage from being at the optimal weight is completely over powered by the skill level of the team. The skilled team light or heavy will win.

What is frustrating is for 99.99% of the sailors I know weight has nothing to do with their performance. 1 Tiny mistake on the course completely outweighs any weight based gains or losses they may ever be able to realize. (When was the last time anyone reading this ran the perfect race – I’m lucky if I can keep it in the groove for 10 boat lengths at a time.) Yet the discussions on this board and on the beach constantly revolve around weight. “What is optimum, oh, I’m too big to be competitive, I cannot get that boat because I’m 5kg over some number somebody posted on a forum etc…..

We as cat sailors really do ourselves a disservice with discussions like this. It definitely hurts trying to sell our sport to the world, sell to the converts from the sport boat world and it definitely does the new sailor no good to try and learn when he is constantly being brainwashed into believing his performance is limited due to some 10kg weight window.