In that case explain to us why a carbon masts would make all other designs uncompetitive over night. And no, "3kg swinging around up there" is not enough.

Secondly are you selling your Taipan 4.9 ?

If so, are you buying one back ?

If not then I rest my case.

If you are then are you buying an Taipan F16 ?

If not then I'll rest my case again.

If you are buying an F16 and are seriously worried in the alu-carbon mast issue then, and only then, lets continue to analyse the situation and come up with a comparison between your alu-masted F16 of choice and the same design with a carbon mast.

Sorry James, I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but I've been in these discussions so many times that I have acquired a short temper on these issues. Especially with Australian Taipan 4.9 sailors who don't really want to sail F16 anyway. You may be different but several others are(were) not.

So lets stop fooling one-another and say it like it is.

You wanna be an F16 sailor ? Good, I will do everything in my power to make the class attractive to you.

You wanna be a OD Taipan 4.9 sailor ? Equally fine by me, but please don't mingle to much with F16 class rules decisions, you belong to a different class.

To other readers, there is some private communication going on on tip weights with people I seriously don't expect to sail F16's in the future. I don't see any point in these communications at all if the only goal of them is to limit the F16 class in getting to get to far ahead of the standard One-Design Taipan 4.9's. That is called throttling.

For Taipan 4.9 sailors who do sail F16's or want to sail F16's, I'm all ears and will do my utmost to keep racing fair to you guys. That is why you may race with oversized jibs for example. And we (not I in this respect) are serious analysing the carbon masts and their impact.

Wouter