Mary, I think that the confusion has come about because other 'formula' classes (F16, F18, F20 etc) are all established along parallel lines and I guess some of us assumed F14 was to be the 14ft version of that trend.
As for F14 in Australia, we've been racing various classes of 14ft cats against each other at 14ft only regattas for about ten years. Not under the banner of F14 but in the spirit of what is happening up your way now. The boats are reasonably well developed, mostly existing production cats sailed in what we call super sloop or turbo (Hobie) configuration which is sloop rigged one up with a trap. No kites as yet though. All the classes race together in a mass fleet from a common start and are mostly very competitive with each other. They are sailed to a local yardstick h/cap generally on an Olympic triangular course and the finishes are usually all very close. They also provide a trophy for o/a line honours champ.
The idea behind exclusive 14ft regattas is to get some relief from the continuous stress on 14ft skippers at open regattas coming from the bigger 16, 18, and 20ft boats who generally see 14ft production cats on the course as a nuisance which is not too cool for the 14ft skippers.
The Australians who participate in these regattas have unrestricted design criteria with only one regulation ie the boats must not be longer than 14ft nom. or 4.3m. Aside from three professionally designed boats, built to race at these regattas and generally on the open regatta circuits, no other radical amateur design has been forthcoming in the ten years these regattas have been running and the manufactures of the three new 14ftrs all took a significant financial hit for their efforts.
I know that the general discussion on the forum is leaning toward a comparatively open development class in the hope that there will be some significant interest and advances in sailboat design and construction achieved but if people had any idea of the amount of work, skill and money involved in doing this successfully they would realise it's not going to happen very often if at all. I read people talking about building hybrids from parts taken from existing boats and making all sorts of bazaar modifications to Hobie 14's etc, and I wish them all the luck in their endeavours but in reality, from a viewpoint of some technical knowledge and experience in design and construction I see it as pretty much a folly to expect any meaningful progress to be made this way. If that's all this is about though and there is enough interest, I say go for it, it'll be fun and who knows, someone might just do something spectacular.
The other consideration is that you don't need a formula to control the open, unrestricted development of 14ft sailboats except to say that they can't be over 14ft long.
regards,
Bern Leslie
