Metal Centreboards – Temporary Rule Change

The General Committee (GC), with the approval of the Technical Committee (TC) and the International Measurers (IM) has taken the decision to temporarily remove metal from the list of allowed construction materials for the centre-board. This change only applies to new builds and will not affect existing boats with metal boards.

World Sailing approved this decision and is also very keen to see this rule change.
This temporary decision is termed an emergency rule change and is covered by World Sailing Regulations. It is standard practice and common in many classes. 

Reasoning. The TC received information that several builders were contemplating metal boards, so the TC discussed and decided, after consultation with the GC, that it was not in the best interests of the class, and requested a temporary rule change pending AGM approval. World Sailing agreed.

Metal boards have not been used in new boats for over 40 years and given the recent trend for thinner boards we consider it would only be a matter of time before metal was used again, possibly with modern high entropy alloys and expensive materials like titanium. We are trying to pre-empt any builder who might attempt this while the class can consider the matter properly.

Having such a range of choice for boards is not really in keeping with the one design principle and makes it harder for new sailors to feel that they are making the correct choice of gear.

This temporary change will be effective from now until at least the AGM in July in France, when a more permanent decision can be made.

The rule change is on the World Sailing website here: http://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/OKD2016CRC110516-[20723].pdf

OKDIA