Mary,

You've got the concept dead on. What I said was that I can sail my boat faster 2-up as a sloop. I do not believe THE BOAT is necessarily faster one way or the other. Take rounding the leeward mark. Sailing 1-up you've got one person to steer, douse the spinnaker, sheet in the main and traveller, adjust the outhaul, downhaul, mast rotation, and get out in the trap. Sailing 2-up the only extra work is adjusting the jib but now you've got 2 people to get everthing done; with a good crew I'm going to round the mark quicker and more efficiently than doing it alone...at least until my skills are sharper.

Bottom line is that I'd be more than happy to sail "first across wins" in a race with both F16 uni and sloops.

Frankly, I don't know what "proof" Robi has that the sloops are faster than the unis. Wouter can chime in with some calculations, but I think the results will show only very minimal THEORETICAL differences between the two rigs. Again, that's one of the unique aspects of the class. Paul and I are the only people I'm aware of to have actually raced F16 sloop vs F16 uni (Camellia Cup at Folsom Lake).

For photos of a uni and sloop at the same start, go to photos #27 and 29 at:

http://www.flyc.org/pdfs/2005/CamCup/2005camcupslideshow.pdf

Since we were the only F16s, the race committee scored us on Portsmouth, giving Paul a slight ratings advantage as a uni. But if we had more F16s--and a mix of rigs--we would have had them score us boat for boat. Until more races with a mix of rigs happens, there's no proof that one or the other rig is faster.