ISO Buzz Sucessor

Have to disagree with you on the point about the 5000 being high maintainence, we had ours for about 3-4 years and nothing really major went wrong with the boat. The only problem was she was too heavy and I reckon the rig could have been designed better. We've had to do more maintainence with the 49er over a shorter time but the sailing makes up for it! 5000s still are really good to sail and from our experience, pretty much bomb-proof. Can't comment on the Boss though

Chris, the Boss and L 5000.  These were not good boats, even in their time.  On the list of other new "Not Good Boats" would also be the ISO. 

I sailed that prototype Asymmetric Fireball. It was anything but rubbish - the boat was well balanced and fast (in enough wind). IMHO the only problem with it was that it wasn't radical enough!

 The class wanted to know if a conversion could be done with minimum changes to the boat and at minimum cost. So for instance the kite was hoisted from the same mast sheave,the pole was kept quite short etc.

 The result was that in light winds, the standard FB kit was quicker - especially on a run. In a F3 it was significantlyquicker, but still L4000s etc were going deeper and faster. Obviously a Mast head (or 3/4 height) kite with a long pole would have been much faster than the version I trialled.

Put simply, more sail was needed and to acheive that major modifications would have been needed. The class thought that a step too far and whilst I think that was a mistake, what do I know? They have after all just had 176 boats at a UK based Worlds so they're doing something right.