The OD Hobie system concept was/is excellent where their "worlds" were sailed on cats supplied new for that event by the "manufacturer" and the boats were balloted for before each race so that no one knew which boat they were going to sail on for which race, was, and is, a successful formula for determining "the best sailor" sailing in that event. This form of competition does not rely on "better systems", "better/faster boats" huge outlays of money by the competitors to be competitive, etc, but instead relys on the skills of the individual sailors. There is no argument that this is the best type of "competition" to achieve those results, and it would be nice if this system could be incorporated throughout the entire sailing fraternity, BUT for some reason there are a vast number of sailors who don't seem to want to sail within such a "formalised" type of organisation. For what ever reasons (and there are more reasons given than there are sailors), there are a lot of sailors who want to exercise their "individuallity" when it comes to expressing their personallities in their ownership and sailing of boats. If this wasn't so, every one would be sailing the one, identical type of sailing craft (regardless of what that should be) A similar "state of mind set" can be applied for the ownership of cars - the whole world would be a lot better off, with less polution, far lower costs, more efficiency etc, if everyone on the face of the world drove the same car!! but we all know that this is something that "will never happen". This argument about which "class" is better, which boat is faster etc is about as solid as "smoke on the wind". The craft that their owners are promoting as "the best, fastest, most advanced" today will, by their own definitions, be "obsolete" tomorrow, so just what is the point of arguing about such a transient "point of view"?