Heck, if the reason for not allowing the Hooter instead of a spinnaker is fear that it will be used upwind in light air, why can't that just be made illegal to do when racing in class? And then supposedly it is a detriment, isn't it -- having all that windage wrapped around the stay?
I can assure everybody that the reason for having the mid grith spi rule, that seems to exclude hooters, was not included to ban hooters. The banning of these is a (regretable ?) side-effect
The reason for its inclusion are unrelated to the hooter sail design; also I don't think any of us (Kirt, Phill, John and myself) would have included it if we weren't forced to do so by some important rating systems and our choice to level race F18's on a fair basis. The last class has this mid girth rule as well.
I just want to make this clear.
Wouter
