skiff or no skiff

Just read the first posting and find it quite amusing that someone sailing a Laser4000 would describe the 49er as tamed down!!!

Simple.

Can your average traditional classes club sailor get in one for the very first time and get it succesfully round the course in a F4 under control without swimming too much or hurting themselves?

Yes?

It ain't a skiff.

Reading the pile of ****on the SA forum, it seems that either a Skiff is a type i-of dinghy, ie a name, like Firefly or GP14, or it is a discription of a type of dinghy that has certain characteristics. As one side of the arguement (mainly in Sydney) will never agree with the other (mainly in the rest of the world), we shall just have to let language evolve in the way it does, and see what happens.

An analogy would be, I suppose, that I could build myself a 17' pointy ended sailing boat and say it is a canoe, but can't say it is an international canoe, unless it fits the rules. Can I build myself an 18' long dish shaped hull with lots of sail and call it a skiff, but not an 18' skiff as it doesn't fit those rules, or is it an 18' long high performance dinghy, with the word skiff not mentioned at all?