Before anybody gets any ideas that I'm writing these posts to promote F16's, read this first.

The F16's wouldn't have stood a chance at the ISAF trials. AHPC was seriously thinking about entering the trails but wasn't willing to remove the daggerboards or satisfy the additional requirements. No other F16 builder considered the trials after that. And at that time the class was at its very beginning and was arguably a "short puppy" compare to others. And we also did an "A-cat class thing" and said "stuff it!" to ISAF requirements that all but garanteed a boat that would not be much faster than the current youth boat.

It was not that designer couldn't design a better boat it was more than the requirements didn't allow much in the way of improvements. ISAF wanted a boat that could be driven into the harbour wall at full speed and survive with just a few bits of gel coat falling off. It even mentioned rubber bumbers at the stems. It also specified a target price of 8000 Euro's per boat and forced a regular "free of charge" supply of regatta boats by the builder. This just doesn't make commercial sense and I think even Hobie expressed that believe.

So the reason why it is 11.000 per boat is that SOMEBODY has to pay for these free regatta boats. That'll be the buyer of the youth boats. So I don't really understand what they benefit of these free regatta boats is. It only makes the initital cost much higher than need be. Look at the mystere 4.3 of how it must be done. And without a large initial class a builder will have trouble selling off 20 former worlds boats each year. This will of course be translated into again raising of the boat price to cover the risk.

But any way before we (I) get off track. This is not about F16's at all. We never stood a chance and never figured we could make it work; nor did we really want to make it work. F16 is totally outside of this. That unless we start comparing prices. But that is a different topic.

Wouter