Mark... not trying to start an argument here but I think that as I've requested in the past (before I was working for Nacra) you should talk to some Nacra 17 sailors, they all do love the boat and little to no qualms about breaking masts.
The top sailors realized how to go faster downwind in sustained 25+ (which they shouldn't be sailing in according to class rules anyways) "round the windward mark, crank cunningham as tight as it can go, rotate out to about the shroud, double trap and send it"
I really don't know what the commentators issue is. The said 30K USD not Euro... boats are about 28K USD... with a carbon mast it's not much more than an F18.
Masts are about $5,800 USD, a 49er mast is about $4,500 (and boat is about 26K) and it's a twig and I'm pretty sure they've broke a lot more than the N17. Really not an unreasonable price. Better than the Nacra 20 mast by almost half!
JC is renting a mast because we had a 2 week backorder, he'll have a new one next week.
Hope this clears the air on some questions.
-Todd

The new issue raised in the commentary is the belief that the boards vary in performance and getting the right boards is essential. How many boards are teams going through to find that "just right board"?

Mark, that's the nature of competition at this level. In every Olympic class at every point we've heard of going through masts, hulls, sails, foils, etc. to get "just the right one". I don't think anything you do will keep the guys with the decently funded campaigns from doing exactly that. The fact that this is taking place with foils is less of a knock on Nacra as much as it is a normal function of Olympic sailing.