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From Mark Heeley
What's your opinion? Jason is right , Mike is a tad biased but certainly no more so than himself. Millennium rigs are a fine development idea but as Jason's boats proved so conclusively in 2000 it is a bad idea to flirt with unproven , or misunderstood technology. I sailed for a couple of days on a Kerr boat with a millennium rig and it never looked less than over complex , marginal and a nightmare to set up correctly.

Rig set up is one of the most important and poorly executed ways to optimise keelboat performance. Jason's millennium solution to his owners was a step in the wrong direction ensuring that the rigs would never be tuned correctly by their largely amateur crews. He effectively admitted this by reverting to a five years old Mumm 30/F40 style rig in his next designs.

The falling down rigs became a great smoke and mirrors device as the sailing public were told repeatedly that without this calamity (with an implication that it was no responsibility of the design office) the Ker's would have won everything they entered . Au contraire. In the Commodore's Cup 2000 , the event where Ker's PR team claim they were regularly beating Farr 40s I viewed the action from a F40 Wolf chartered by Glyn Williams for the event. Our boat was hull no.2 (of over 100) , was genuinely knackered after five years of neglect , sailed by a typical amateur crew and we never saw the celebrated Ker on the race track, were never behind them on the water at any point and really never understood what all the fuss was about. Following that event in which there were six Farr 40s sailing I had seen enough to decide to buy a F40.

This boat has a rig that will not fall down, is more competitive than a Ker in IRC and IRM despite being a five year old design, has fantastic one design sailing, reliable resale, and a five year sponsorship deal signed with Rolex to ensure some spectacular World Championships in the best venues in the World.

The F40 is not new but that does not mean it is not news. It was ahead of its time, still is, if you want a boat for next year's Commodore's Cup and then the F40 Worlds in the Bahamas in November and a spot of Key West in January (40 boat fleet) don't buy the Ker PR just make the bleeding obvious decision.
Original Story Here

From John Corby
What's your opinion? I can't resist joining the 'who was competitive under IRC' debate. Mike Richards was correct to point out that it certainly wasn't the Ker designs. However because he works for Farr he was understandably reluctant to mention Corby designs: Charles Dunstone's Nokia (below) won Class 0 at the National Champs for the second year running, beating all Swans and Kers. She went on to do the same at the Berthon Source. In fact it was only Desperado who beat her at Cowes Week. Elsewhere, Nokia's smaller sister Colm Barrington's Gloves Off won every major regatta in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Simple: Corby boats top in IRC, Farr top in IRM. Case closed. Original Story Here

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