[quote=wlrottge]To everything that Sam said, +1.
I've owned two Marstroms (T and an A-cat) and my sailing partner has multiple T's and a semi-custom, Melvin designed, all carbon 20' boat. The last boat weighs in at 250 lbs ready to sail. We've raced that thing HARD; even though it has a massive rig and is ~17 years years old, it is still super SUPER stiff.
Both of my Marstrom's are/were the same way; Nomex boats require a more careful owner, but the longevity is there. Like Sam said, there were plenty of Tornado's that went through multiple Olympic quads and were still fast (won medals) because of the quality of build. This is one of the major arguments that the Nacra 17 class used; "boats will be cheaper because of construction/build materials" (foam/infusion vs. nomex/prepreg).... but... they don't last like Goran's boats did.... So, what is the real cost?
Generally, classes want to keep the boats relevant and balance the price/performance in making these decisions. Could you build an F-18 with more expensive materials, yes; but if you have the same limits on weight, why would you? The result would be a more expensive boat with little/no performance gain.
Regarding boat data; use SCHRS or Texel as they are the best consolidated sources, but the class rules are the final word.[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
