240 lbs = 109 kg

Seriously ? If so, then you can forget about the A-cats altogether. I have to check but I seem to remember that the commercially available A-cats are only supplied with a warrenty up to 100 kg (220 lbs) crew weight. The hull designs are all pretty much optimized around 75 - 80 kg (165 - 175 lbs) crewweights. The F16's are of course designed around a much higher average crew weight as they are also used as doublehanders. It is always better to sail a boat underweight then overweight. In addition all the components on the F16 are designed to take much higher loads for the same reason; something your 240 lbs will almost excert on the boat by singlehanding alone. (pardon my frankness)

If you wanted to have a competitive singlehander A-cat then you will have to order a custom made A-cat, with most likely custom made hulls, and that will be very expensive.

In the past discussions I always assumed that the choice for the F16 or A-cat pretty much would be determined with what you wanted to do with it, but now I feel perfectly save to say that you have only one true option. The F16. I'm quite sure that you will get better performance out of that F16 then any commercially A-cat.

Pete when ordering that Blade (finalizing) make sure that you give the builder this body weight info and your dominant usage of the boat and have him foward this to the sailmaker who then can cut a mainsail to suit your weight. You'll will need that in order to get the best performance out of the boat.

Are you intending to mostly do singlehanding ; as in 85 % of the time ? If so then order a fully optimized singlehander cut mainsail.

If you plan to doublehand frequently as well then you will have to decide on the compromise design crewweight or order 2 seperate mainsails. If you will be doublehanding mostly with your kids then the standard Blade mainsail may well be a rather good compromise. You can easily make a 140 kg optimized standard mainsail work for your 109 kg solo weight and I don't expect your kids to be above 42 kg's yet and you can make the 140 kg standard sail work for 160 combined weight.

Lets discuss this Before you put in the final order; at time time you can tell adapt the order to suit your usage best without making extra costs.

Wouter