Yup owning and sailing an A is one of lifes sailing experiances, gotta be done. Unfortunately with the rate of development of the modern spinnakered boats with foils and the punitive handicap the A's incur, they sadly will become purely a class racing boat even more so than today.

I'm a "young at heart" 54 but do acknowledge that time is fast catching up with the body and I'm just not physically able to do some of the more mundane things easily, that I could do when I was younger ( tying ones shoe laces as an example ). At the sailing club last night a few of us oldies joked we should buy a flying fifteen and join the real oldies.

The snuffer below the tramp is worthwhile looking at, to date I have never had a retrieve failure unlike the normal snuffer ring which seems to have the occassional hiccup. I think though to productionise it you would need to consider how to get it higher off the water. My greatplan had always been a Y beam with integrale snuffer and forestay, we have to make up weight to 104kgs, why not put it to better use in a stiffer boat + the front beam becomes part of the structure.

Try Hans Klok he would know most of the European A sailors, you maybe surprised just how helpful the A sailors are. My understanding one of the top A sailors is going to race an F16 next year so should be interesting.

I will take photos of the difference in size of the boards but I would guess that the A's are only around 1% of sail area, but very high aspect ratios to get the efficencies. The A seems to lack a bit of low speed drive sometimes ( sideways drift )but get up around 5 knots hull speed and its game on.