Steve,
When we bought our Taipan 4.9 three or four years ago, one of the reasons was that we thought we (or at least Rick) would be able to race it in the F16 class.

It did not come with a spinnaker and pole, etc. We were told that in order to be an F16 we had to have the spinnaker. So we bought the whole spinnaker rig after the fact.

Are you saying it is NOT required to have a spinnaker rig for the boat in order to be F16 compliant and that you can still be a member of the class and have a vote if you don't have a spinnaker?

And is that why those 200 Taipan 4.9's in Australia are able to be F16 class members and be able to vote, even if they have not modified to include spinnakers?

This is a bit disconcerting or consternating or something like that.

The rules "seem" to say the boat is required to have a main, jib and spinnaker for double-handed racing and a main and spinnaker for single-handed racing. They also say you don't necessarily have to USE all the sails, in either configuration, when racing.

I took the latter caveat to be just for safety reasons or personal preference given the sailing conditions.

So now it turns out that we did NOT have to buy that spinnaker?