Tornado – The King is dead, long live the King
With the final confirmation of the boat types for 2012 (not the final classes) , the Tornado ends and era of domination.
The T is still the best performance cat out there, but if you can´t get more than 6 Ts in a US Championship, there´s something wrong with the class.
Is impossible to have MNA´s to vote in favor of a Multihull event when the class in their home countries does not exist.
So besides ISAF declaring itself a monohull organization the multihull community and specially the ITA has to take responsability too.
If ISAF doesn´t like us, having an elite of 40 guys sailing the Olympic cat will not help at all.
So now the recently created IMC International Multihull Council must work to reisntate the multihull for 2016. And even though the T remains untouched, we need a more popular boat.
We need an F18, or the F18 class itself, but we all know that´s a dream as ISAF requires monotype onedesign boats (read at least with same hull design)
The F18 is most popular performance cat class, continous growth and exiting competition with several T stars participating in each Worlds.
Last T World in New Zealand got together 40 Ts, to have a fair comparison due to the location, we can say that last F18 World in Australia joined 80 boats.
Now with the F18 Worlds in Spain in July the organization already has 160 particpants confirmed! There you have your performance and popular multihull of choice.
F18s can provide same show, close T performance and of course more people involved.
The problem is ISAF would probably choose only one brand, so which one will be the next Olympic Multihull ?? The Tiger? Infusion? mmmmm
Next we´ll analyze top F18 boats…
Why not go away from a single design? Simply state a size limit and sail area. The rest woud be down to competing manufactures and skill.
Even allow a small engine but limit the fuel.
Martin made a small error in his article. There were 53 Ts in Auckland not 40.
What makes it difficult for people to get into the Torndao class is the fact that a T is 10″ wide and not as easy to trailer as the F18s. We sail against F18s in Perth, Australia and blow them away around a course. If the F18s weren’t so heavy they may be the more competitive boat. For out and out speed a T wins hands down.
For sure The T is the highest performer, never doubt that, but the results for creating a bigger class were not fullfilled.
The Tornado should remain Olympic with the OD new setup.