The A does have the extra waterline length and the design is all about low weight, low drag and low displacement. Everything from the rig to the hulls are optimised for this.
Agreed but that has taken nearly 30 years of development. There is now quite some development going on with the F16's, we are starting to opitimise the boats for weight and drag. With an extra 1M in the main and 3.7 in th jib and only 1 1/2 ft shorter we should be fairly equal if not ahead as the hull drag is optimised better. The learning curve of the A will benefit us greatly and will shorten ours.
As for downwind, the new A's are now keeping up and even beating F18s downwind. It is not just the curved boards, but the stiff hulls, flexible (fore and aft) masts and incredibly powerful mains that are allowing these boats to trap downwind. Whilst you are setting your kite, they are shooting of in the sunset trapping downwind, not that you will be anywhere near them when they turn around the top mark.
Yes off into the sunset for the first 75 metres and then the F18's and F16's are up and running faster and lower, it doesn't take long before you can reel the A's in. On short course racing its normally pretty even by the time you get back to the start. At a recent handicap race where the A's were starting, it was noticed a ShadowX with the new large kite ( virtually a F16 ) could reel in the No 2 in the European A Class downwind enough to handicap out as winning the race. That Shadow sailor is a very good sailor but is he comparible in skill ?
The other thing to contend is that very few people can trapeze downwind consistantly sucessfully on an A, you only have to look at race reports where the worlds best all have spills of some kind, sometime in an event. On an F boat most people can trapeze downwind under spinny, it is a far far easier skill to learn for some reason.
Not dissing the A's, they are a wonderful boat, very refined and lovely to sail, but I think they may well be knocked off the top perch fairly soon, by any of the F16, F17 and F18's once developed a little more, being more than an equal match.
