Mike, if the people I was referring to had your attitude that foiling is just another way to enjoy the sport we love, that would be great and I wouldn't criticise anything.

However, the people I'm referring to are those who say things like "foiling is the future for young sailors"; "this is the future"; "the best sailors only want to race on foils"; "it is the future of our sport at all levels....If you’re a young kid getting into sailing you want to be in the foiling generation."

The message they are pounding in, time and time again, is quite specific - there is only one future (certainly at the top level) and it is foiling. If you sail where it's too rough for foilers, where it's too light for foilers, where there's no racing for foilers, then you have no future in the sport. If you happen to prefer any other form of the sport, then you have no future. If you cannot afford to throw away a H16 and get a foiler, you have no future.

Saying that the other parts of the sport have no future is clearly denigrating the rest of the sport. Sure, a lot of it is childish marketing bulldust, but then surely we can call them on that, and on their narrow-minded view on what the sport can be. It's pretty simple - if people want to us to be positive about their part of the sport, they can stop saying that the rest of the sport has no future.

Interesting info on the UFO speed. It would be great to see it work, and it probably will. All I'm saying is that it doesn't help the sport if other people (and it's not the Clarks) spend their time saying that 99.X% of the sport has no future.