John, Mary, and Steve,

Thanks for the good input. You guys all raise some excellent points. Just to be clear, I don't have the answers (just the questions) - that's why I'm asking for your input! (and I do appreciate the responses)

Steve, in your post you said:
>> If you were comparing two boats 16ft long, identical hull shape etc, one weighed 100kg with 16sqm sail area, the other weighed 150kg with 24sqm sail area. Assuming identical crew weights, you`d find the following :
- Boat 1 (light) would handle stronger winds than boat 2 (less sail area : crew weight ratio).
- Boat 1 would accelerate quickly in gusts (lower inertia), meaning that less of the force of the gust would be prone to capsizing the boat. Boat 2 (heavy) would resist acceleration, and the initial force of the gust would want to push the boat over before pushing it forward.

It sounds like there could be some merit to this but let me play devil's advocate for a minute.

I'm not sure that sail area:crew weight ratio is any more meaningful than sail area:boat weight ratio. If the two boats are proportionately powered, I would think the greater righting moment of the heavier boat should compensate for the larger sail area and associated heeling moment allowing the heavier boat to handle winds similarly to the lighter boat. It's also not clear to me that even though a boat has less inertia and can accelerate better that it's less likely to capsize; when the heeling moment exceeds the righting moment it will capsize even if it's accelerating at the time.

You also said:
>> Boat 1 would sit higher in the water, since 1kg of boat will displace 1liter of water, so boat 2 will have to displace 50liters of water more than boat 1 before reaching it`s displacement. This allows boat 1 to appear to have more bouyancy, in fact they have the same bouyancy, but boat 1 has a lower dispacement, meaning it will ride higher over chop & slam the beams less often.

Lighter boats may sit higher in the water and may appear to have more bouyancy but I would think that would depend a lot on hull shape. But if they do sit higher in the water, appear to have more bouyancy, and are lighter it still seems like they're going to be more effected by waves than heavier boats.

Regarding lighter boats being easier to right, no argument there!

Jerry